Left alone, I stood watching the play of sunshine amid the leaves, when I was roused by a touch and found Captain Danby beside me.
"Your flint looks a trifle loose, sir," said he softly, "Suffer me!"
I relinquished the weapon with a murmur of thanks and stood again absorbed until I felt the pistol thrust into my grasp and heard a loud voice speaking.
"Pray attention, gentlemen! Take notice, the word will be 'one—two—'"
The loud voice faltered suddenly, was lost in the trampling of horse's hoofs and into the grassy level between Devereux and myself rode my uncle Jervas with my uncle George close behind.
My uncle Jervas reined in his horse and sat glancing serenely round about him, his lips curling in his bleak, sardonic smile, his prominent chin something more aggressive than usual.
"Ah, gentlemen," said he gently. "Your humble servant, I bid you good morning. Sir Geoffrey Devereux, we are very well met—at last. This is a pleasure I much desired when—we were younger, as you will doubtless remember, but I imagined, until very recently, that you were dead, sir, and damned, and necessarily out of my reach. You have hidden yourself surpassingly well, sir."
Very deliberately my uncle Jervas dismounted and proceeded to tether his horse to an adjacent tree, while Devereux watched him, head bowed and black brows puckered slightly above his smouldering eyes, his snowy cravat stained with a small mark of blood from an ugly scratch beneath his chin and which, despite his icy assurance seemed to worry him, for he dabbed at it now and then with his handkerchief. And now my uncle Jervas approached me, his hand outstretched imperiously, but when he spoke his voice was strangely gentle:
"Peregrine, dear boy, oblige me with that pistol."
"God bless you, Uncle Jervas!" said I fervently grasping that hand. "I thought I recognised you when your horse leapt that tollgate, but fate elected I should arrive here first, as I prayed."