“Ay, and the lad?” Blunt asked. “Would you have him sail with us yet?”
“I have no preference.”
“Ay, but if you knew he was safe aboard, and sailing with me—not for France, for pickings in the Indies—would you find me the hundred guineas then, Mr. Craike, ere I sailed?”
“I should find one hundred guineas with ease,” my uncle answered. “I suggest nothing, direct nothing—have no share in any plot against my nephew. Yet if I knew—and none here knew—that he was safely under hatches, Blunt, I’d pay this hundred guineas ere you sailed.”
“He’ll be out of the house this night, aboard by the morning,” Blunt vowed.
I heard my uncle’s light laughter; I heard him humming a tune as he walked away. Blunt and Martin came scrambling over the wall, and not detecting me hidden under the creepers, tramped away through the wood.
Chapter XXVI. Sir Gavin Masters
Now for a space I lay hid under the wall, having no mind to enter the garden and meet my uncle, but seeking time to review the perils threatening me, and the steps by which I should avoid them. I believed that Blunt, ere he made his offer to my uncle, had already planned with the old rogues my removal from the house, and that of this the girl Evelyn Milne would have warned me. I thought first of going immediately to my grandfather and of laying the plot before him; having with me always the thought of the broken figure, of the will striving ever to prevail over decay, I could perceive little hope from such a course. Had Miss Milne faced me now; had she appealed to me to take her out of the house, and escape with her to my friends, I should have hesitated not at all; my concern for myself urged me to instant flight; yet I was no such coward as to take to my heels, and leave her friendless in a house of which she had expressed such terror. I could devise no better plan than further to search the wood for her, and if I failed to find her, proceed to seek out Sir Gavin Masters, tell my tale to him, and urge his intervention and protection for us, and his immediate communication with Mr. Bradbury. I marvelled that one so acute as Mr. Bradbury, knowing the character of the house and its folks, and the peril I must encounter, should have thought fit to leave me at Rogues’ Haven.
I remained hid under the wall, till Blunt and Martin should be well away; crawling back then to the wood I sought the girl as best I might, fearing to call her name, lest I bring my enemies upon me. Failing, I forced my way out of the old plantation; struggled through a ditch; climbed through a sunken fence, and muddy and torn with brambles, sought the road by which Mr. Bradbury had brought me to Craike House.
It was now toward noon of a clear day; the wood was green about me; the sunlight and the sense of freedom after the terrors of the close old house restored my spirits speedily. I had a certain compunction at my flight—leaving the girl, and, indeed, my grandfather, old and broken, among the covetous rogues. I told myself that I should save them better by reaching Sir Gavin Masters, yet I could not rid my mind of the thought that by running off in fear of Blunt I played the coward. So much at last this thought concerned me, that even on the very bank above the road I stood irresolute. Not yet was I resolved when the sound of hoof-beats made me cower into the grass, for fear lest any of my enemies should ride that way. Peering through the covert, I saw a stout red-coated gentleman mounted on a cob; with joy I recognised Sir Gavin Masters. He paused below me, sheltering his eyes with his hand against the sun, he was staring up toward Craike House, whose chimney stacks alone showed above the wood. As I rose out of the grass, he uttered an exclamation; his hand sought the pistol in his holster.