“Odd little man that, sir,” said the preventer.

“Very odd little man,” said the vicar.

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Chapter 3

The Coming of the King’s Men

Meantime the little sexton had arrived, breathless and panting, at the inn. Here he was accosted with a breezy, “Hello, Mr. Mipps, where’s the Doctor?” The speaker was Denis Cobtree, the only son of the squire. This young worthy of some eighteen summers was being prepared in the paths of learning by the vicar with a view to his entering the university; but Denis, like his father before him, cared very little for books, and the moment the Doctor’s back was turned, off he would slip to talk to some weather-beaten

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seaman, or to attempt a flirtation with Imogene, the dark-haired girl who assisted the landlady at the inn.

“Just been talkin’ to the vicar on the sea-wall,” said Mipps, hurrying past into the parlour and calling loudly for Mrs. Waggetts.

“What do you want?” said that good lady, issuing from the kitchen with a teapot in her hand. Tea was the luxury she indulged in.

“A word,” answered the sexton, pushing her back into the kitchen and shutting the door behind him.

“Whatever is it?” asked the landlady in some alarm.

“What’s the time?” demanded the sexton.

“A quarter to four,” replied Mrs. Waggetts, turning pale.

“Good!” said the sexton. “School will be closing in a minute or two, so send Imogene round there to ask Mr. Rash to step across lively as soon as he’s

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locked up. But no”—he added thoughtfully—“I forgot: Rash is a bit struck on

the girl and they’ll linger on the way; send young Jerk, the potboy.”

“Jerk’s at school hisself,” said Mrs. Waggetts.

“Then you go,” retorted the sexton.

“No,” faltered the landlady. “It’s all right, I’ll send the girl; for she can’t abide Rash, so I’ll be bound she won’t linger. And while she’s gone I’ll brew you a nice cup of tea.”

“Throw your tea to the devil,” snarled the sexton. “One ’ud think you was a diamond duchess the way you consumes good tea. When shall I knock into your skull that tea’s a luxury—a drink wot’s only meant for swells? Perhaps you don’t know what a power of money tea costs!”

“Come, now,” giggled the landlady, “not to us, Mister Mipps. Not the way we gets it.”

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“I don’t know what you means,” snapped the wary sexton. “But I do wish as how you’d practise a-keepin’ your mouth shut, for if you opens it much more that waggin’ tongue of yours’ll get us all the rope.”

“Whatever is the matter?” whimpered the landlady.

“Will you do as I tell you?” shrieked the sexton.

“Oh, Lord!” cried Mrs. Waggetts, dropping the precious teapot in her agitation and running out of the back door toward the school. Mipps picked up the teapot and put it on the table; then lighting his short clay pipe he waited by the window.

In the bar sat Denis Cobtree, making little progress with a Latin book that was spread open on his knee. From the other side of the counter Imogene was watching him.

She was a tall, slim, wild creature, this Imogene, dressed as a fisher, with a rough brown skirt and a black fish blouse, and she wore neither shoes nor

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stockings. Her hair was long and her eyes black. She had no parents living, for her father—none other than the notorious pirate Clegg—had been hanged at Rye—hanged publicly by the redcoats for murder; and the mother—well, no one knew exactly who the mother was, Clegg having lived a wild and roving life; but it was evident that she must have been a southerner, from the complexion and supple carriage of this girl—probably some island woman of the Southern Seas. Imogene was a great favourite with all the men on account of her good looks and her dauntless courage when on the boats at sea; for she loved the sea and was wonderful upon it—her dark eyes flashing, her hair blowing wild, and her young bosom heaving with the thrill of fighting the waves.

Imogene liked Denis because he was nice to her, and, besides, he made her laugh: he was so funny. His ways were so funny, his high manners were so funny, but his shyness attracted her most.

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He was shy now because they were alone, and the boy knew that she was watching him; so he made a feint of studying his book of Latin, but Imogene could see that his mind was not on his reading.

“You don’t get on very fast, Mr. Denis,” she said.

Denis looked up from the book and laughed. “No,” he said, “not very, I’m afraid; I’m not very fond of books.”

“What are you fond of?” said the girl, leaning across the bar on her bare elbows.

“Oh, what a chance to say ‘you’!” thought the young man; but somehow the words wouldn’t come, so he stammered instead: “Oh, nothing much. I like horses rather; yes, I like riding.”

“Is that all?” said the girl.

“About all,” said the boy.

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“Mr. Rash, the schoolmaster, tells me that he likes riding,” went on the girl mischievously; “he also likes books; he reads very fast, much faster than you do.”

“Not Latin books, I’ll be bound,” said young Denis, starting up scarlet with rage, for he hated the schoolmaster, in whom he saw a possible rival to the girl’s affection. “And as for riding,” he cried, “a pretty fellow that to talk of riding, when he doesn’t know the difference ’tween a filly and a colt. He sits on an old white scragbones, jogs along the road at the rate of dyke water, and calls it riding. Put the fool on a horse and he’d be skull under the hoofs before he’d dug his heels in. The man’s a coward, too. I’ve heard tales of the way he uses the birch only on the little boys. Why, if they’d any sense they’d all mutiny and kick him round the schoolhouse.”

“You’re very hard on the schoolmaster, Mr. Denis,” said the girl.

“You don’t like him, do you?” asked the boy seriously. “You can’t!”

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But the girl only laughed, for into the bar-parlour had come Mrs. Waggetts, accompanied by the gentleman under discussion, and followed by young Jerk, the potboy.

Jerry Jerk, though only a lad of a dozen years, possessed two excellent qualifications: pluck and a head like a bullet. He had got through his schooling so far without a taste of the birch: not that he hadn’t deserved it, but the truth was—Mr. Rash was afraid of him, for he once had rapped the little urchin very severely on the head with his knuckles, so hard, indeed, that the blood had flowed freely, but not from Master Jerk’s head—oh, no: from the teacher’s knuckles—upon which young Jerry had burst into a peal of laughter, stoutly declaring before the whole class that when he grew up he intended to be a hangman, just for the pleasure of pulling the bolt for the schoolmaster. So ever after Jerry went by the name of “Hangman Jerk,” and whenever the pale, washy eye of the sandy-haired Mr. Rash fell on him, the schoolmaster pictured himself

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upon a ten-foot gallows with that fiend of a youngster adjusting the running noose around his scraggy neck.

This young ruffian, entering on the heels of the schoolmaster, and treading on them hard at every step, took over the bar from the fish girl, Mr. Rash remarking with a show of sarcasm that “he hoped he didn’t interrupt a pleasant conversation, and that if he did he was more sorry than he could say to Mr. Denis Cobtree.”