Pomfrett considered this intelligence; then he turned sharply upon Murch.
“Come, Mr Murch,” says he, “let us be clear, and no misunderstanding at all, as you might say yourself. You took Dawkins’s boats, you say. Was there any fighting?”
“I’m always charmed to answer questions when they bear to the point,” says Murch. “If you mean, was there any collision betwixt Dawkins and myself, I may tell you that the two parties never saw each other, with the exception of a trifling few men Mr Dawkins left to guard the boats.”
“Then I may take it that Dawkins, having captured the town and driven the inhabitants into the woods”—Pomfrett was conscientiously mastering the situation, as usual—“you robbed them and then came away in Dawkins’s boats, leaving him——”
“To pad the hoof, sir, like the old cut-purse he is,” Murch concluded, with a grave nod. “Now, are you satisfied, Mr Pomfrett? Very well. Then I have a proposal to make to you two gentlemen, to which I beg your serious attention.”
He leaned forward, rapping the table once or twice with the knuckles of his clenched fist, and glowering upon us like a thunderstorm.
“You and me have got to square accounts, Mr Pomfrett,” says he. “Now, I’m not a man that wastes two words where one will serve, and so I’ll ask but this question: Are you prepared to take my ward here, Morgan Leroux, in lawful and honourable marriage? Yes or no?”
“Yes.” Pomfrett answered prompt as an echo.
Mr Murch, his arm outstretched, the great corded hand resting on the table, stared at Pomfrett, quiet as a man of stone, for perhaps five seconds. Then, without moving any other part of him, he turned his eyes on Morgan Leroux.
“And what do you say, wench?”