And now the tumult lessens. Most of the villagers have fled, and ten men of those who had manned the Lapwing stand bound upon the beach. Crumblejohn has long since staggered off, and subsided, blue with fright, in a ditch, to be picked up by the Excise men some fifty yards or more from the scene of the encounter, to be marched more briskly than his failing senses would have thought possible, along the road, hands bound, to his own Inn.
And Thurot, the gallant Thurot, with arms flung wide on either side of him, lies dead, in his faded uniform, beside a blackened torch.
But there is another corpse. It lies distressfully. The form is contorted, so that you may barely see the masked face.
Yet it should not be difficult to identify this body.
There is a finger lacking to the right hand.
CHAPTER XXV
O day, pass gently that art here again,
Turn memory’s spear, and may thy vespers close
Upon a twilight odorous of the rose,
Drooping her petals in the falling rain.