Part 15 (1/2)

”Hide them! Quick!” said Landless in a low voice, and wheeled to face a man who stood in the doorway, blinking into the semi-darkness of the room.

The lid of the hollow swung to with a click, the log a.s.sumed its wonted appearance, and the mender of nets, too, turned upon the intruder.

It was the convict Roach who had pushed the door open and now stood with his swollen body and b.e.s.t.i.a.l face darkening the glory of the sunset without. There was no added expression of greed or of awakened curiosity upon his sullenly ferocious countenance. He might have seen or he might not. They could not tell.

”What do you want?” asked Landless sternly.

”Thought as you might not have heard the horn, comrade, and so might get into more trouble. So I thought I'd come over and warn you.” All this in a low, hoa.r.s.e and dogged voice.

”Don't call me comrade. Yes: I heard the horn. You had best hasten or you may get into trouble yourself.”

The man received this intimation with a malevolent grin. ”Talking big eases the smart, don't it?” and he broke into his yelling laugh.

”Get out of this,” said Landless, a dangerous light in his eyes.

The man stopped laughing and began to curse. But he went his way, and Landless, too, after waiting to give him a start, left the hut and turned his steps towards the quarters.

Upon the other side of the creek, sitting beneath a big sweet gum, and whittling away at a piece of stick weed, he found the boy who, the day before, had accused him of feeling as fine as the Lord Mayor of London.

He sprang to his feet as Landless approached, and cheerfully remarking that their paths were the same, strode on side by side with him.

”I say,” he said presently with ingenuous frankness, ”I asks your pardon for what I said to you yesterday. I dessay you make a very good Sec'tary, and Los.h.!.+ the Lord Mayor himself mightn't have dared to strike that d--d fine Court spark. They say he has fought twenty duels.”

”You have my full forgiveness,” said Landless, smiling.

”That's right!” cried the other, relieved. ”I hates for a man to bear malice.”

”I have seen you before yesterday. I forget how they call you.”

”d.i.c.k Whittington.”

”d.i.c.k Whittington!”

”Ay. Leastways the parish over yonder,” a jerk of his thumb towards England, ”called me d.i.c.k, and I names myself Whittington. And why?

Because like that other d.i.c.k I runs away to make my fortune. Because like him I've little besides empty pockets and a hopeful heart. And because I means to go back some fine day, jingling money, and wearing gold lace, and become the mayor of Banbury. Or maybe I'll stop in Virginia, and become a trader and Burgess. I could send for Joyce Whitbread, and marry her here as well as in Banbury.”

Landless laughed. ”So you ran away?”

”Yes; some four years ago, just after I came to man's estate.” (He was about nineteen.) ”Stowed myself away on board the Mary Hart at Plymouth.

Made the Virginny voyage for my health, and on landing was sold by the captain for my pa.s.sage money. Time's out in three years, but I may begin to make my fortune before then, for--” He stopped speaking to give Landless a sidelong glance from out his blue eyes, and then went on.

”A voice speaks through the land, from the Potomac to the James, and from the falls of the Far West to the great bay. What says the voice?”

Landless answered, ”The voice saith, 'Comfort ye, my people, for the hour of deliverance is at hand.'”

”It's all right!” cried the boy gleefully. ”I thought you was one of us.

We are all in the fun together!”