He rode back to Battle soon after noon, with his horse muddy and his face warm with a blustering wind. And being minded to learn what he could in the matter of gossip and common report, he went, after dinner, into the public parlor of the inn and sat down on a settle near the window. A little round man and a great gaunt farmer were drinking and smoking opposite each other in the ingle-nook, and John Gore pulled out his pipe, for gossip’s sake, and smoked himself into the pair’s good graces.
The little man proved to be the barber-surgeon of the town, a rolling, jolly quiz of a rogue who made his patients laugh even when he was bleeding them, and had a wink for every pretty girl and a pat of the hand or a pinch for the children. He was a communicative person, and had been carrying on most of the conversation with the farmer, who sat with his long legs crossed and the stem of his pipe resting upon his folded arms. The farmer would give his pipe a cock and nod his head when the surgeon said anything he heartily approved of, and scrape the heels of his boots on the bricks and heave himself when he was inclined to disagree.
John Gore had joined these worthies in a gossip on the Dutch wars, and was proving to them how a ship could throw a broadside of shot to the best advantage, when the sound of a trotting horse came down the street, and the surgeon, who never let a cart pass without looking to see what was in it, came to the window to look out. They saw a man in a brown coat and a big beaver loom up on a lean black horse. He pulled in toward “The Half Moon,” and, glancing about him for a moment, got out of the saddle as though he were stiff and tired. A hostler came running from the yard, and the man in the brown coat tossed the bridle to him, and, stooping down, lifted his nag’s near forefoot. The horse had cast a shoe, and his master looked vexed over it, as though he grudged the delay.
The little surgeon was noticing all these details, but not with the same interest as the man at his elbow. Something familiar in the man’s figure had struck John Gore at the first glance, but it was only when he dismounted that he noticed that the fellow carried one shoulder a little higher than the other, and that his head seemed set a trifle askew. Then suddenly he remembered the man’s face, with its sallowness, its roving eyes, and its air of impudence that could change into quick servility. It was the man whom my Lord Gore had spoken of as Captain Grylls, and whom he had met with him by Rosamond’s Pool in the park that evening before the gathering at the house of Hortense.
John Gore stood irresolute a moment. Then, after he had turned over twenty possibilities in his mind, he walked out of the parlor and down the passage leading to the stairs. My lady of the inn was standing in the street doorway, waiting till the man in the brown coat should have finished giving orders about his horse. John Gore loitered on the stairs and listened.
“My nag has cast a shoe, ma’am, and I am held up for an hour, and deuced hungry. Get me some good hot liquor and some dinner, and I will remember you in my prayers.”
“Will you please to step into the parlor, sir?”
“My best services, ma’am; I have another three leagues of road yet. Your fellow has taken my nag to the smith’s.”
John Gore heard the bustle of the landlady’s petticoat, and retreated up the stairs to the private parlor overhead. He walked to and fro for a while, with a frown of thought on his face, before crossing to the bedchamber to pack his belongings into the little leather valise he carried strapped to the saddle. He was fastening the straps when he heard footsteps on the stairs, and caught Mistress Green Stays coming up with a bosomful of clean linen.
“Betty, my girl, run down and ask your mother to let me know her charges. I am following my friend on to Chichester in an hour.”