"What appearance does the man make?" I demanded.
"Merciful gad!" mine host exclaimed; "once seen, never forgotten, and once heard, never forgotten. He quotes me Thomson, and he tells me of his estate in Virginia."
The answer was not of a sort to allay my suspicions.
"Then he appears to be a landowner?" said I.
"'Ods! Blest if I know what he is," says Mr. Claude. "He may be anything, an impostor or a high-mightiness. But he's something to strike the eye and hold it, for all his Quaker clothes. He is swarth and thickset, and some five feet eight inches—full six inches under your own height. And he comes asking for you as if you owned the town between you. 'Send a fellow to Marlboro' Street for Mr. Richard Carvel, my good host!' says he, with a snap of his fingers. And when I tell him the news of you, he is prodigiously affected, and cries—but here's my gentleman now!"
I jerked my head around. Coming down the steps I beheld my old friend and benefactor, Captain John Paul!
"Ahoy, ahoy!" cries he. "Now Heaven be praised, I have found you at last."
Out of the saddle I leaped, and straight into his arms.
"Hold, hold, Richard!" he gasped. "My ribs, man! Leave me some breath that I may tell you how glad I am to see you."
"Mr. Jones!" I said, holding him out, "now where the devil got you that?"