CHAPTER XX
AN UNWELCOME VISITOR
A little before sunset on that same day—almost precisely indeed at the moment at which Flavia's shadow darkened the splayed flank of the window in the Tower—two men stood beside the entrance at Morristown, whence the one's whip had just chased the beggars. They were staring at a third, who, seated nonchalantly upon the horse-block, slapped his boot with his riding switch, and made as poor a show of hiding his amusement as they of masking their disgust. The man who slapped his leg and shaped his lips to a silent whistle, was Major Payton of the —th. The men who looked at him, and cursed the unlucky star which had brought him thither, were Luke Asgill and The McMurrough.
"Faith, and I should have thought," Asgill said, with a clouded face, "that my presence here, Major, and I, a Justice——"
"True for you!" Payton said, with a grin.
"Should have been enough by itself, and the least taste more than enough, to prove the absurdity of the Castle's story."
"True for you again," Payton replied. "And ain't I saying that but for your presence here, and a friend at court that I'll not name, it's not your humble servant this gentleman would be entertaining"—he turned to The McMurrough—"but half a company and a sergeant's guard!"
"I'm allowing it."
"You've no cause to do other."