“Yes. Get out of the place to-morrow. You can’t remain in it with bare walls: and it’s going to be stripped, I hear. Green simpletons, you must be! I dare say the landlord will let you off by paying him three months’ rent. I’ll see him myself. And you’ll both come home with me, like two young dogs with their tails burnt.”
“And lose all the money I’ve spent?” cried Tod.
“Ay, and think yourself well off that it is not more. You possess no redress; as to finding Copperas, you may as well set out to search for the philosopher’s stone. It is nobody’s fault but your own; and if it shall bring you caution, it may be an experience cheaply bought.”
“I could never have believed it of a sailor,” Tod remarked ruefully to old Druff, when we were preparing to leave.
“Ugh! fine sailor he was!” grunted Druff. “He warn’t a sailor. Not a reg’lar one. Might ha’ been about the coast a bit in a collier, perhaps—nothing more. As to that grenadier, I believe she was just another of ’em—a sister.”
But we heard a whiff of news later that told us Captain Copperas was not so bad as he seemed. After he had taken Rose Lodge and furnished it, some friend, for whom in his good-nature he had stood surety to a large amount, let him in for the whole, and ruined him. Honest men are driven into by-paths sometimes.
And so that was the inglorious finale to our charming retreat by Bendemeer’s stream.