"It is the men's cries as they haul on to the halyards, so as to be ready when the wind comes. Yet the schooner has enough tide beneath her to carry her swiftly down to the open. Listen, Anne, their voices are becoming fainter.
"I hear. They are moving."
"They are moving. In ten minutes they will be gone."
As they sat together later, and he ministered to her wants, recognising well that, without her bravery to assist him, he could never have turned the tables so thoroughly upon Bufton's villainous scheme as he had done, he remembered the fifty guineas which the latter had handed over to him at the last moment. Whereupon he passed them over to the girl.
"They are yours, Anne. You are his lawful wife--soon, doubtless, you will be his executrix. He has still money about him, which I make no doubt the skipper of the Nederland will appropriate. He will land a beggar. Heaven help him!"
"You say that?" Anne exclaimed, "Heaven help him! Help him who ruined you. You can say that?"
"No," he cried savagely. "No. I do not say it. I retract. Damn him! he forged Lord Glastonbury's name, but passed the bill to me, since he owed me one-half the sum, and I paid it into Child's bank. Then, when Glastonbury caused me to be arrested on board the ship I served in, and I stated where I had obtained the bill, that craven hound now going to his fate swore he knew nought about it--that my story was a fabrication. But that his lordship and I loved the same woman, and she sacrificed herself to save my neck--unknown to me--as well as paid the money to the bankers, I should have swung at Tyburn."
"Wherefore," said Anne, "you forgave him for the time--with an end in view."
"With an end in view. An end, my determination to reach which never slackened. And it is reached. Anne, it is borne in on me that he will never come back. If he does, then----"
"He never will return," said Anne. "It is also borne in on me. Now let us go," and she moved towards the door, throwing over her the great cloak which she had removed after the drawer had quitted the room, and replacing the hat.