"When the villain struck me," he explained, "I was encumbered with the sack of grain I was bearing, and ere I could lay it down and reach my weapon, the fellow had disappeared down the hatchway."
"Come, come, Reuben!" cried a sceptic near-by, "we all know you are readier with your tongue than with either sword or musket; and I for one am not sorry to have you taught a lesson, were it not that the blow was struck at a citizen of St. Mary's, and therefore at us all. I am for punishing Dick Ingle for the assault, yet lightly; but for the treason he spoke he should be hung at the yard-arm of his own ship."
"Not hung perhaps; but surely put in custody of Sheriff Ellyson here," suggested another of the group, who stood in the morning sunlight outside the log cabin which served for a hostelry.
"Aha!" laughed the man next him, "our innkeeper would not see the number of drinkers of his good ale diminished by one. How say you, Master Boniface, would it not be well to compel the traitor to drink himself to death at the expense of the Lord Proprietary?"
All but two of the men laughed at this sally. The innkeeper naturally failed to see the fun of a jest of which he was the butt, and the sheriff took the suggestion into serious consideration.
"By the Saints, it were a good scheme and has much to commend it. It may seem a pity to waste good wine on a bad man, when the one is so scarce and the other so plenty; but it would mightily relieve the authorities. 'Put him in the custody of the sheriff!' you say; and how, pray, am I to hold him when I have no jail save my two hands? Can I lie with him at night and eat and drink by day with my arm locked in his? I would he were at the bottom of the sea!"
"If every man were at the bottom of the sea who has been wished there, it would be hard to find a channel for the ships, and we might walk to England dry-shod!"
It was Giles Brent who spoke, and the men, who had not seen him approach and did not know how much he had overheard, looked somewhat taken aback, for the discussion of public officers and their duties was not looked upon with special favor.