"Pardieu! Who else?" growled the stranger. "Open the door, woman. I am perished with cold."
With an unceremonious kick he pushed the door further open and strode in. A woman was standing in the dimly lighted passage. As the stranger walked in she bobbed him a respectful curtsey.
"It is all right, Mounzeer," she said; "the Captain's in the coffee-room. He came over from Bristol early this afternoon."
"No one else here, I hope," he queried curtly.
"No one, zir. It ain't their hour not yet. You'll 'ave the 'ouse to yourself till after midnight. After that there'll be a bustle, I reckon. Two shiploads come into Watchet last night--brandy and cloth, Mounzeer, so the Captain says, and worth a mint o' money. The pack 'orzes will be through yere in the small hours."
"That's all right, then. Send me in a bite and a mug of hot ale."
"And stay--have you some sort of stabling where the man can put the two horses up for an hour's rest?"
"Very well then, see to that too: and see that the horses get a feed and a drink and give the man something to eat."
"Very good, Mounzeer. This way, zir. I'll see the man presently. Straight down the passage, zir. The coffee-room is on the right. The Captain's there, waiting for ye."
She closed the front door carefully, then followed the stranger to the door of the coffee-room. Outside an anxious voice was heard muttering a string of inconsequent and wholly superfluous "Whoa's!" Of a truth the two wearied nags were only too anxious for a little rest.
A man was sitting, huddled up in the ingle-nook of the small coffee-room, sipping hot ale from a tankard which he had in his hand.
Anything less suggestive of a rough sea-faring life than his appearance it would be difficult to conceive; and how he came by the appellation "the Captain" must for ever remain a mystery. He was small and spare, with thin delicate face and slender hands: though dressed in very rough garments, he was obviously ill at ease in them; his narrow shoulders scarcely appeared able to bear the weight of the coarsely made coat, and his thin legs did not begin to fill the big fisherman's boots which reached midway up his lean thighs. His hair was lank and plentifully sprinkled with grey: he wore it tied at the nape of the neck with a silk bow which certainly did not harmonise with the rest of his clothing. A wide-brimmed felt hat something the shape of a sailor's, but with higher crown--of the shape worn by the peasantry in Brittany--lay on the bench beside him.