Landless bowed, and the mender of nets struck in. "I was sorry to keep you so long, Major Carrington, in such an uncomfortable position. But the arrival of the Muggletonian before he was due, together with your desire for secrecy, left me no alternative."
"I surmise, friend Godwyn, that you would not have been sorry had this young man proclaimed his discovery in full conclave," said Carrington with a keen glance.
Godwyn's thin cheek flushed, but he answered composedly, "It is certainly true that I would like to see Major Carrington committed beyond withdrawal to this undertaking. But he will do me the justice to believe that if, by raising my finger, I could so commit him, I would not do so without his permission."
"Faith, it is so!" said the other, then turned to Landless with a stern smile. "You will understand, young man, that Miles Carrington never attended, nor will attend, a meeting wherein the peace of the realm is conspired against by servants. If Miles Carrington ever visits Robert Godwyn, servant to Colonel Verney, 't is simply to employ him (with his master's consent) in the mending of nets, or to pass an idle hour reading Plato, Robert Godwyn having been a scholar of note at home."
"Certainly," said Landless, answering the smile. "Major Carrington and Master Godwyn are at present much interested in the philosopher's pretty but idle conception of a Republic, wherein philosophers shall rule, and warriors be the bulwark of the state, and no Greek shall enslave a fellow Greek, but only outer barbarians—all of which is vastly pretty on paper—but they agree that it would turn the world upside down were it put into practice."
"Precisely," said Carrington with a smile.
"You had best be off, lad," put in Godwyn. "Woodson is an early riser, and he must not catch you gadding.... You will think on what you have heard to-night, and will come to me again as soon as you can make opportunity?"
"Yes," said Landless slowly. "I will come, but I make no promises."
He found Porringer seated in their boat, patiently awaiting him. They cast off and rowed back the way they had come through the stillness of the hour before dawn. The tide being full, the black banks had disappeared, and the grass, sighing and whispering, waved on a level with their boat. When they slid at last into the broader waters of the inlet, the stars were paling, and in the east there gleamed a faint rose tint, the ghost of a color. A silver mist lay upon land and water, and through it they stole undetected to their several cabins.
Meanwhile the two men, left alone in the hut on the marsh, looked one another in the face.