"DEAR SIR--When you see this you will be well out of danger and, it is hoped, none the worse for your dissipation. This from one who admires your skill and courage and who advises you to keep out of England for at least a year.
"A WELL WISHER."
He looked back over the stern of the ship. The shore had fallen out of sight. The sky was clear. The sun shining. The wind was blowing from the east.
He stood for a long time looking toward the land he had left.
"Oh, ye wings of the wind! take my love to her and give her news of me and bid her to be steadfast in her faith and hope," he whispered.
He leaned against the bulwark and tried to think.
"Sir Benjamin has seen to it," he said to himself. "I shall have no opportunity to meet her again."
He reviewed the events of the day and their under-current of intrigue. The King himself might have been concerned in that and Preston also. It had been on the whole a rather decent performance, he mused, and perhaps it had kept him out of worse trouble than he was now in. But what had happened to Margaret?
He reread her note.
"My father has learned of our meeting and of how it came about," he quoted.