I'll not pay
you this side of the doors."
He bit his lips and studied the floor. "You're a gentleman," he
growled at last. "I suppose I can trust ye."
"I suppose you can."
Taking up his lantern he turned toward the door. "It 's growing
late," he said, with a most uncouth attempt to feign a guileless
drowsiness. "I'll to bed, captain, when I've locked up. Good-night
to ye!"
He was gone, and the door was left unlocked. I could walk out of
that gaol as I could have walked out of my house at Weyanoke. I
was free, but should I take my freedom? Going back to the light of
the fire I unfolded the paper and stared at it, turning its contents
this way and that in my mind. The hand - but once had I seen her
writing, and then it had been wrought with a shell upon firm sand.
I could not judge if this were the same. Had the paper indeed come
from her? Had it not? If in truth it was a message from my wife,
what had befallen in a few hours since our parting? If it was a
forger's lie, what trap was set, what toils were laid? I walked up
and down, and tried to think it out. The strangeness of it all, the
choice of a lonely and distant hut for trysting place, that pass
coming from a sworn officer of the Company, certain things I had
heard that day . . . A trap . . . and to walk into it with my eyes open.
. . . An you hold me dear.
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