"And there is no smuggling carried on?--and what you said to implicate Mr. Castlemaine has no foundation save in your brain?" she reiterated, half bewildered with this new aspect.
"If I said such outrageous things, my wits must have gone clean out of me," asserted Walter. "Mr. Castlemaine would be fit to hang me, ma'am, if it came to his ears."
"But--if there is nothing of the kind carried on, what of the boats last night?" asked Mary Ursula, collecting her senses a little. "What were they doing?"
"Boats, lady!" returned Walter, showing the most supreme unconsciousness. "What boats?"
"Some boats that put off from an anchored vessel, and kept passing to and fro between it and the Keep."
"If there was boats, they must have come off for some purpose of their own," asserted the young man, looking as puzzled as you please. "And what did I do, down where you found me, you ask, ma'am? Well, I did go there to shoot a bird; that little strip o' beach is the quietest place for 'em."
Was he wandering now?--or had he been wandering then? Miss Castlemaine really could not decide the question. But for having seen and heard the boats herself, she would have believed the whole to be a disordered dream, induced by the weakness arising from loss of blood.
"But how did you get there, Walter?"
"Down that there slippery zigzag from the chapel ruins. The tide was partly up, you say, ma'am? Oh, I don't mind wet legs, I don't. The door? Well, I've always known about that there door, and I pushed it open: it don't do to talk of it, and so we don't talk of it: it mightn't be liked, you see, ma'am. 'Twas hearing a stir inside it made me go in: I said to myself, had a bird got there? and when I saw your light, ma'am, I was nigh frightened to death. As to boats--I'm sure there was none."
And that was all Mary could get from Mr. Walter Dance this morning. Press him as she might now--though she did not dare to press him too much for fear of exciting fever--she could get no other answer, no confirmatory admission of any kind. And he earnestly begged her, for the love of heaven, never to repeat a word of his "tattle" to his father, or elsewhere.