“I’m well now,” said Nicholas rather shyly but happily. “I’m glad you have come back.”
“I was at my wit’s end when I thought of you, lad,” went on the other, “for I remembered too late that neither of us knew the other’s name, and if I had told mine or asked yours in the hearing of a certain rascal it might have been a sorry time for us both. They made a little mistake, you see,—they took me for a traitor.”
“How could they?” said Nicholas, surprised and indignant.
“Oh, black is white to a scared man’s eyes,” said his companion light-heartedly. “How have your father’s ships prospered?”
“There’s one of them,”—Nicholas pointed, proudly, across the little space of water, to the Rose-in-June tugging at her anchor.
“She’s a fine ship,” the young man said consideringly, and then, as he saw the parcel Nicholas was taking from his bosom, “Do you mean to say that that has never been opened? What sort of folk are you?”
“I never told,” said Nicholas, somewhat bewildered. “You said I was not to speak of it.”
“And there was no name on it, for a certain reason.” The young man balanced the parcel in his hand and whistled softly. “You see, I was expecting to meet hereabouts a certain pilgrim who was to take the parcel to Bordeaux,—and beyond. I was—interfered with, as you know, and now it must go by a safe hand to one who will deliver it to this same pilgrim. I should say that your father must know how to choose his captains.”
“My father is Master Gilbert Gay,”—Nicholas held his head very straight—“and that is Master Garland, the captain of the Rose-in-June, coming ashore now.”
“Oh, I know him. I have had dealings with him before now. How would it be—since without your good help this packet would almost certainly have been lost—to let the worth of it be your venture in the cargo?”