Suddenly his fury fell away. He seated himself in the hedge and passed a hand over his face. 'Dick!' he said hoarsely. 'Poor lad!'
Roger stiffened. His eyebrows drew together, his mouth tightened. He stared down at the letter.
'Dick? Did you say Dick?'
'Ay, Dick Hooper. 'Tis there. An order to arrange for the arrest of the person of Richard Merrion Hooper, in the Parish of St. Brennion.'
Roger stared down at the written sheet, his face paling under the sunburn.
'Impossible!' he jerked out. 'Dick's a loyalist like yourself.'
'Nothing is impossible in these days.'
'What has he done?'
'That I am not told. Mayhap he has looked in pity at the creaking bones of a wretch hanging at the cross roads for Monmouth's sake.'
Roger turned, and leaning on the gate, buried his head on his arm. The tlot, tlot of a horse on the road below rose in the stillness of the morning. 'I could wish the brute had foundered and thrown his rider into the ditch—that highwaymen had seized him and his cursed letter,' ran the Admiral's thoughts, as, unconscious of his companion, he stared down the quiet slope. Far below showed the north front of Garth, the chimneys cutting the shining bar of the sea into irregular shapes. Only one window was visible through the trees of the garden—the window of the Admiral's study which, in an upper storey, ran the width of one wing, looking out on one hand on the Channel, and on the other to the rising land of the pastures. In the middle of the room stood the old sailor's beloved telescope, through which Roger had many times studied the rig of passing vessels. It happened that as the Admiral was staring out to sea, small thin fingers were swinging the telescope round to the north, and very soon the two men were plain to the eyes of Mademoiselle Elise, who was supposed by the housekeeper to be still in her bed.