He was a little old man, dressed in rough fisherman’s attire and with the most prominent eyes I had ever seen. Indeed, his whole appearance gave me the impression that he was not overburdened with wits. The interior of the hut was of the poorest description. On the one side I caught sight of a half-finished boat, upon which the fellow had been engaged when I had disturbed him. Upon the other was a couch of dried fern leaves. This, together with a rough table and stool and a litter of nets, seemed to sum up the total of his property. Yet when I had given him a hurried explanation, he readily consented to return with me for my companion, and a minute later we were striding down the coombe side by side. I gathered on the way that we had landed upon the northern coast of Torbay, and that Cleeve itself lay little more than two miles distant. I learned also that two days before a French fleet of six sail of the line had put into the bay, but that upon the approach of a British squadron they had sailed hurriedly for the coast of France, so that all danger of invasion was at present at an end.
“Ah,” thought I, “so, my lady, your pretty scheme has failed, and the wheel of fortune turns once more in my favour!” We found my companion still lying in the same position in which I had left him, and raising him in our arms, bore him with difficulty—for he was no light weight and the trees were thick—back to the hut. But it was upon reaching this latter, and depositing our senseless burden upon the bed of ferns that fate culminated in the strangest trick of all. For no sooner did the old man beside me catch sight of my companion’s face in the light of the rushlight fixed to the wall than he uttered a startled exclamation.
“Lord save us!” he cried. “’Tis the master himself.”
“How, fellow!” I said in surprise. “You know this gentleman?”
“Aye, aye,” he answered, scarce finding his tongue. “Know him? I have lived this forty years upon his land.”
“Then who is he?” I cried, no suspicion of the truth dawning upon my mind. “Speak out, man?”
“You do not know?” he stammered. “You do not know the Earl of Cleeve?”
“What!”
In my surprise I gripped his arm so tightly that he cried out in sudden pain, and wrenching himself free, caught up his hammer and put the table between us. But as for me I had forgotten the fellow’s very presence, and stood staring down into the white face of the man before me with but two thoughts gradually dawning upon my stunned senses; for if this man’s words were true, then this—this—was the Earl of Cleeve, and my lady’s brother. As all the possibilities of what this latter phrase might mean to be flashed suddenly upon my mind I could have shouted aloud in my elation. It was not that I knew this man’s name to be proscribed, it was not for the sake of the reward offered by government for his capture, though that alone might have tempted a more sordid man than I—no, it was the knowledge that I held his secret and his life in the hollow of my hand—that now at last I would have a full and final reckoning with my lady. At last! Oh, I would wring that proud heart! I would humble that haughty spirit to the very dust! I would crush her without pity or remorse! She should plead—kneel—nay, grovel at my feet—for the life that I would refuse!
We had parted last with but little seeming hope for me to obtain revenge; now all the cards were in my hand, and the man whom she had scorned, despised, and struck—struck!—I swore a bitter oath at the remembrance—had power to bring ruin upon her house and make her taste the bitterness of death!