‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Cunningham Haze, looking it over. ‘Ah—I perceive it is not what I expected to see. Mr. Somerset was mistaken.’
When the chief constable had left the house, Captain De Stancy shut the door and drew out the original photograph. As he looked at the transcript of Dare’s features he was moved by a painful agitation, till recalling himself to the present, he carefully put the portrait into the fire.
During the following days Captain De Stancy’s manner on the roads, in the streets, and at barracks, was that of Crusoe after seeing the print of a man’s foot on the sand.
V.
Anybody who had closely considered Dare at this time would have discovered that, shortly after the arrival of the Royal Horse Artillery at Markton Barracks, he gave up his room at the inn at Sleeping-Green and took permanent lodgings over a broker’s shop in the town above-mentioned. The peculiarity of the rooms was that they commanded a view lengthwise of the barrack lane along which any soldier, in the natural course of things, would pass either to enter the town, to call at Myrtle Villa, or to go to Stancy Castle.
Dare seemed to act as if there were plenty of time for his business. Some few days had slipped by when, perceiving Captain De Stancy walk past his window and into the town, Dare took his hat and cane, and followed in the same direction. When he was about fifty yards short of Myrtle Villa on the other side of the town he saw De Stancy enter its gate.
Dare mounted a stile beside the highway and patiently waited. In about twenty minutes De Stancy came out again and turned back in the direction of the town, till Dare was revealed to him on his left hand. When De Stancy recognized the youth he was visibly agitated, though apparently not surprised. Standing still a moment he dropped his glance upon the ground, and then came forward to Dare, who having alighted from the stile stood before the captain with a smile.
‘My dear lad!’ said De Stancy, much moved by recollections. He held Dare’s hand for a moment in both his own, and turned askance.
‘You are not astonished,’ said Dare, still retaining his smile, as if to his mind there were something comic in the situation.
‘I knew you were somewhere near. Where do you come from?’