“Um! that’s a goodish time. May I inquire if he knows your whereabouts?”
“I think not. I didn’t tell him of my intentions when I came here. We—er—had a difference of opinion.”
Dick Bracknell laughed. “I don’t blame you for that. He’s a starchy old buffer is the governor, and a regular perambulating pepper pot.” He was silent for a moment, and then he inquired jerkily, “How—a—did he take—that—a—a—little affair of mine?”
“You mean the selling of the plans of the Travis gun?”
“There’s no need for you to be brutal!” was the sharp reply. “I’ve paid pretty heavily for that piece of madness. You’ve to remember that I’m the heir of Harrow Fell, and that if I show my nose in England I shall probably get five years at Portland or Dartmoor.”
The corporal knew that this was true, and was conscious of a little compunction. Without alluding to it he answered the question. “Sir James took that very badly. It was hushed up, of course, but when you disappeared, and your name was gazetted among the broken, he pressed for an explanation, and got it. As you can guess, proud old man as he is, it wasn’t a nice thing for him to hear.”
“No.... Poor old governor!”
A strained silence followed, and a full two minutes passed without any one speaking. Then the corporal glanced at his cousin. The latter was sitting in his bunk, staring straight before him, with a troubled look in his eyes. He moved as the corporal looked at him, and as their eyes met, he laughed in a grating way.
“The husks are not good eating,” he commented, “and I’ve been feeding on them ever since the day I skipped from Alcombe.”
The corporal was still silent, a little amazed at his cousin’s mood, and the other spoke again. “Don’t you go thinking I never regret things, Roger my boy. There never was a prodigal yet who didn’t lie awake o’ nights thinking what a fool he’d been. And for some of us there’s no going back to scoop the ring and the robe and to feast on the fatted veal.... There are times when I think of the Fell, and hear the pheasants clucking in the spinney. And I never sight at a ptarmigan but I think of the grouse driving down the wind on Harrow Moor. Man—it’s Hell, undiluted.”