The smuggler gazed after him with a dark look in his eyes—a look which, had the youth seen it, would have made him shudder.
Once Percy looked back and saw Tryon just starting away from the spot where he left him, but not by the path. No, instead of that he struck squarely off into the wood, his face toward the stone cottage.
“He is going to see my mother,” said our hero, with a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “He is there oftener than I like.” For a time he stood where he had stopped, with his gaze fixed upon the spot where the form of the smuggler had last appeared. At length he burst forth, at the same time smiting his free hand upon his bosom:
“Oh! where—where have I seen that man? Somewhere—somewhere—when he was not what he is now! My father knew him, and would not tell me who he was. I wonder if my mother knows. Of course she does. And Rodney must know. I shall find out somehow. The mystery puzzles me. Aye, it frets me. There is something uncanny about the fellow. There is a piratical look about him that chills me to the very core. But, let him go. There are pleasanter things in the world than Ralph Tryon.”
And with this the youth set forth once more on his way to the castle. A few minutes saw him clear of the wood, and in fifteen minutes more he was at the steward’s door.
Allerdale Castle was a grand old pile. In fact it was both old and new. A portion of it, the main walls and the donjon, together with a portion of the outbuildings, were of the time of the Plantagenets; there was a later structure of the time of Elizabeth, and a wing of goodly dimensions—a fair-sized dwelling of itself—was of modern build, having been constructed by the grandfather of the present earl and finished by his father.
“Ah, Percy! It’s good for one’s eyes to see ye! What’s in the basket? I hope ye haven’t come empty handed, for his lordship has made up his mouth for a fish breakfast—O-o-oh! Bless and save us! Where did ye take ’em?”
It was the fat old steward, Michael Dillon, who had thus hailed the young man, and who had thus exclaimed when he had looked into the basket and espied the silvery treasures that filled it almost to the brim.
“I took them at the mouth of the Cove channel, Michael, the only spot I know where those mongrel salmon can be found. If the earl don’t find them as toothsome as anything he ever eat in the shape of fish, then the fault will lie at the door of your cook.”
“Ho! Lord Oakleigh has been out I don’t know how many times to try for those same fish, and he has never caught one yet.”