'In Taunton, on this brute?' cried Roger.
'I shall change horses at Bodmin,' said the messenger. As he spoke, he took the bridle. 'Can I cross the fields here to the Bodmin road?'
'I'll show you the way,' said Roger, and walking a few yards with the man, he pointed out, through a break in the inner hedge, the Bodmin road lying in the valley.
'Does your master pay you?' asked Roger abruptly.
''Tis a pity he can't pay the horse. A finer grey I never saw. It grieves me to see a brute wasted so. Here's a shilling. Promise you will give him a fair bucket of oats--or, if he sweats more, a bran mash and a warm belly cloth.'
The man's eyes softened. 'I promise. You're very good, sir.'
'Nay, nay. But it goes to my heart to see that horse wasted so. Good morning.'
Roger strode back to the gate where the Admiral was still standing. From the letter in his hand dangled the strings and seals of the Lord Chancellor. Roger paused and hung back a trifle, wondering were it best to leave him. Whatever might be the new business to hand, he could see the Admiral's wrath was gathering. His face purpled, the eyes growing round as a parrot's. For a second he appeared to be on the point of choking. Suddenly he dashed the letter to the ground, and swung round on Roger. Digging his staff into the turf, he spluttered in incomprehensible rage.
'I will not do it!' he roared. 'By the Lord Harry, I will not!'
Suddenly his fury fell away. He seated himself in the hedge and passed a hand over his face. 'Dick!' he said hoarsely. 'Poor lad!'
Roger stiffened. His eyebrows drew together, his mouth tightened. He stared down at the letter.
'Ay, Dick Hooper. 'Tis there. An order to arrange for the arrest of the person of Richard Merrion Hooper, in the Parish of St. Brennion.'
Roger stared down at the written sheet, his face paling under the sunburn.
'Impossible!' he jerked out. 'Dick's a loyalist like yourself.'
'That I am not told. Mayhap he has looked in pity at the creaking bones of a wretch hanging at the cross roads for Monmouth's sake.'
Roger turned, and leaning on the gate, buried his head on his arm. The tlot, tlot of a horse on the road below rose in the stillness of the morning. 'I could wish the brute had foundered and thrown his rider into the ditch--that highwaymen had seized him and his cursed letter,' ran the Admiral's thoughts, as, unconscious of his companion, he stared down the quiet slope. Far below showed the north front of Garth, the chimneys cutting the shining bar of the sea into irregular shapes. Only one window was visible through the trees of the garden--the window of the Admiral's study which, in an upper storey, ran the width of one wing, looking out on one hand on the Channel, and on the other to the rising land of the pastures. In the middle of the room stood the old sailor's beloved telescope, through which Roger had many times studied the rig of passing vessels. It happened that as the Admiral was staring out to sea, small thin fingers were swinging the telescope round to the north, and very soon the two men were plain to the eyes of Mademoiselle Elise, who was supposed by the housekeeper to be still in her bed.