Peter made the required vow, not dreaming how soon he would be tested. For just as he had made up his mind to create an occasion for going to Lostwithiel, and, acting on his credit as an old servant, to take the journey on his own responsibility, who should walk into the stable-yard but Admiral Penrock.

'Was that little Charity I saw going down the lane. Peter?' inquired the master.

'Like as not, sir.'

The Admiral prodded the groom's shoulder with his staff.

'Fie on thee, Peter! Are these tricks learned in London? Thinkst thou canst take Jack Poole's place?'

This idea never having occurred to grey-haired Peter, he was some time in apprehending it; then, with a sheepish grin, he accepted the visit of the fisher girl in the light his master chose to cast upon it. And not knowing that the end of Charity's letter was sticking out of his pocket, the old groom allowed himself to be poked by the Admiral again, and questioned adroitly as to the habits of the young lady. Not a syllable would Peter utter to break his word to pretty Charity, and in the end he rode off to Lostwithiel to seek a fresh bottle of lotion for the horses.

The Admiral stumped after him up the lane. He was intending to pay a morning visit to Roger Trevannion. The boundary wall between the two estates was crumbling in places, and the Admiral was minded to arrange with Roger to see to the matter on his behalf. The early sunlight lay slantingly across the tree-tops, and the old sailor, noting the freshness of the new green mantle that overspread the countryside, sighed to think that so fair a world could be so awry.

Ever since the day, now over a month old, when he had bidden Marion good-bye and driven back to the west, he had felt an irksomeness in his duties that was new to him. Had his office remained simply that of magistrate in his own parts, he would not have felt the burden. But the Lord Chief-Justice Jeffreys, in scouring the West Country, had learned that if there was one man in Cornwall whose loyalty to the Crown was to be relied upon, that man was Admiral Penrock of Garth. Consequently, when the spies of Jeffreys, still lurking in the county after their lord had returned to London, revealed one or two tracts in Cornwall which the hounds of the dreaded Judge had not thoroughly drawn, Jeffreys decided to make the Admiral master of that particular hunt. 'By fair means or foul,' ran his order, 'you will run the quarry to earth.' And the Admiral, who had a thorough dislike for meddling with affairs outside his own district, had been obliged to obey.

In various Cornish towns—Bodmin, Truro, St. Austell, Penzance—a number of soldiers were kept in readiness for his orders. His new duties carried him far and near. People who had never heard of him began to have reason for remembering his beetling brows, his thundering tones. The Admiral was in a fair way to become a dreaded person. In a magistrate 'twas all very well. But the old sailor carried a warm heart under his garb of authority, and there were times when that warm heart was chilled at the thought of the pain he had brought into many people's lives since Jeffreys had chosen to lay his commands upon him.

Another reason for disliking his new office had been the necessity for leaving Garth many days at a time without a master. He found himself in the position of a general who, while conducting wars abroad, neglects the enemy within his own frontiers.

Two facts, however, brought comfort to the Admiral: the absence of Marion during this time, and the recent departure of Victoire for her Breton home. Elise herself had never merited the complete distrust that underlay the old sailor's thoughts of Victoire. Since Keziah's uncomfortable revelations he had thought hard and watched shrewdly—when he was at liberty to watch. Had he possessed in his service a man of education and trustworthiness, untinged by the prejudice that coloured the judgment of the country folk, Garth would not have been left thus at the mercy of fortune. But no such man, Roger Trevannion excepted, had been within hail, and it was impossible without arousing suspicion to bring Roger from his own lands to act as overseer of the Penrock demesne. Consequently the Admiral had granted Victoire permission to cross the Channel without much troubling himself as to any hidden reason for her departure.

Victoire thus abroad, the old French attorney on his way to England, the Admiral experienced a sense of relief. He looked forward with the heartiest pleasure to the day when the attorney would arrive at Garth. Then he would consider his duty to his old friend accomplished. He had fathered Elise in her growing girlhood; she was now old enough to be given over to the care of her aunts. He had certainly done his utmost to train the girl to standards of thought which were native to the comrade of his fighting days. The fact that in some way Elise's nature had been warped to begin with, was beyond his control, and there he left the problem, vaguely attributing the crookedness to some strain on the mother's side. The Admiral had never seen Madame de Delauret. To contemplate the return of Marion, and the final departure of his ward and her maid from Garth, was to the Admiral something akin to watching in the darkness of the waning night for the daystar of the dawn. When he arrived at the Manor, Roger was in the farmyard at the back of the house, setting a dozen men to their day's work. He strode to meet his visitor with a look of pleased surprise.

'This is an honour, sir,' he said heartily, the golden lights showing in his brown eyes, 'and all the more for being paid so early. Will you come indoors for a tankard of ale? My mother will be pleased to see you in the house.'

'Nay,' said the Admiral, nodding to the farm men who were pulling their forelocks and chanting 'Marnin', Admur'l!' 'I have but just breakfasted. Those are fine horses yonder, Roger. You keep them well.'

The two moved out of earshot of the menservants.

'I saw Peter in the lane just now, but he said not you were coming,' remarked Roger.

The sailor's eyes twinkled. ''Tis a simple soul, that Peter. Did he say aught to you of a letter to my daughter, writ by Charity Borlase, that was in his pocket and had emptied all the bottles of lotion in the stables?'

As he spoke, the Admiral was casting a critical eye over a young cart-horse, the latest addition to the Manor stables, and he was unaware of Roger's slight start.

Roger had wondered more than once what could have been taking Charity up the hillside towards the headland that overlay Haunted Cove. In the revelation of the later afternoon he had remembered the chance encounter; Charity's embarrassment recurred to him.

At the sight he had had of Elise in close converse with the old traitor of Garth, Roger had experienced a momentary but severe shock. The idle talk of the village which, he knew very well, was more than half due to a deep-rooted hatred for foreigners, he had honestly tried to discount, putting away the versions that had reached his ears as gossiping women's tales. But he was too young, too human, not to be affected in his judgment by his personal attitude to Victoire and her young mistress. The only being to whom he had ever mentioned the matter had been Dick Hooper, his boyhood's friend. Young Dick had shrugged his shoulders. 'Wait a bit. Ill weeds grow for cutting. The girl's crooked, but the woman's wicked.' And so the subject had been passed by.

And now the distrust and dislike of close on ten years, and the memory of the persistent tales of the villagers, had suddenly made for Roger an inflammable track down which the spark of a strong suspicion raced. The burning revelation ran into words, right enough, clear as the flaming signs on the wall at Belshazzar's feast. 'Thou art tried in the balances and found wanting,' flickered the gleaming letters, as of old, and then died away. And Roger was left pondering as to the nature of the final word which must lie somewhere, at present unillumined. When and whence that final proof must appear, Roger could not guess; but he had read the riddle well enough to be profoundly uncomfortable as to its portent, and, more than all, as to its effects on the house of Garth.

A fatherless son, heir to an estate the control of which called for judgment and action, Roger had learned the weight of responsibility when most youths of his age and class had been conning Greek and Latin texts. And now his first thought had been as to his own share in the matter. What was his duty towards the Admiral and Marion? Marion. His heart had stirred at the passing thought of Marion, of her sweet wholesomeness, her contempt for double dealing, her outspoken truth. To think of her just then was like looking from a dark, secretly stirred pool to an open, sunswept stream.

What could have been Elise's business yonder? Could it be political? Something connected with denunciations of still hidden Monmouth men? Hardly so; rumours in the village had been years old before ever Monmouth landed at Lyme. And yet, these were days of distrust and treachery. Could some dark fate be hurling suspicion at the heads of the two people whom, next to his mother, he loved wholly?

Roger had ridden home in the company of unhappy thoughts, slowly resolving that he must trace the trouble to its source, and begin with the Admiral himself.

The chance mention of Charity, however, made Roger pause. Charity had been writing to Marion. Perhaps it would be well to see Charity first. His instinct was that whatever had been her business that afternoon, Charity was friend and not foe. On seeing the Admiral, his first thought had been to take advantage of his visit and unburden himself at once of the story. Now, in secret relief, he put the idea aside, determining first to learn what was Charity's part in the affair. So, while the Admiral was poking among his horses, Roger's thoughts ran; he turned gladly for the moment out of the shadow that had fallen across his path, not knowing that a small cloud, the size of a man's hand, lay on the far horizon.

Talking of farming matters, the two started on a leisurely survey of the Manor close, and presently came on the beech-topped hedge that was the northern boundary of the Garth lands. Leaning on the gate set in the hedge, they lingered some time. The conversation had fallen on the near prospect of a letter from Marion, on her life in Kensington; on the French attorney's visit, the contemplation of which, though neither knew the other's thought, brought to each a sense of comfort.

From the gate a little path ran down towards the house, making a diagonal course through the intervening pastures. The Admiral, about to light his second pipe, paused, tinder-box in hand, and stared across the fields. His face darkened.

'If I mistake not, yonder is one of Jeffreys' couriers. What fresh business is toward now? Could it not have waited my return to the house?'

'I thought your work in that direction was finished, sir.'

'So did I. So did I. You see what a price one pays, my lad, for being an honest man. I declare, I thought when my lord's last letter came, that I would go to sea again, that I did, stump and all, so as to be free of this scurvy business.'

'The man will hear you, sir,' ventured Roger.

'Let him! Let him! He's heartily welcome!' But none the less the old man struck his flint, and contented himself by roaring int............