"The devil he did!" exclaimed the man, drinking off a full glass of the exhilarating liquor; "that's a queer game, when he promised to——"
"Don't you know that his promises can't always be kept?" said the woman. "Circumstances alter cases. There's been a circumstance here."
"A what!" cried the man, in an angry tone; "why, you're getting so bad as the boy, Jenny Cooper."
"Hush, Cap'n! I've got something to tell 'ee," replied his wife; and seating herself on a low chair, opposite the fire, and blowing it up lustily with the bellows at the same time, she related to her husband the accident, and told him the young gentleman was still in bed upstairs.
"Whew!" whistled the captain;—"then his game is up for a spur, and t'other is out of the way and off the scent,—so no herring-pool, after all; but where is the old man gone to?"
"I don't know," replied his wife; "but I shouldn't wonder if he's gone down to the old place again, now the coast is clear. He'll be noted again in St. Just, now that the breeze is blown over, and the scent is in another quarter, as you do say it is."
"Right you are," rejoined the captain, looking more pleased than he had looked yet since his return. "And now I'll tell you our bit of spree." And he related to his wife the expedition to Ashley Hall, and how his companion had left the girl with the lady, thinking to frighten her into submission to their terms, and that, when she went back again the next day, to see how the land lay, she found the little door in the lane locked and barred on the inside, and when she applied for admission, at the front entrance, she was told that Mrs. Courland could not see her. "So she's in a fix," continued the man; "but she stayed behind, and she'll blow the gaff, if they don't come to, soon. I should have stopped too, but I thought my old friend might want to be off at once, and so I came back to get all things right and straight for the trip."
"And you'd better get things right and straight now," said his wife; "for he may be going off all the same, for what I do know."