"Good morning!" said the Commandant.
"Ah? Good morning to you, sir," answered Tregarthen, clearly surprised, but showing no sign of guilt or confusion.
"You have heard the news?"
"No, sir."
"The Lord Proprietor is missing."
"Missing?" Tregarthen set down his f.a.ggots and stared at the Commandant.
"He has been missing since yesterday at dusk. I understand that you were in his company shortly before then, on Carn Coppa?"
"That is so, sir. I left him and Sam Leggo standing together there at the top of the field."
"A few minutes later he sent Leggo to the farmhouse to fetch a lantern.
Leggo declares that on his way back he heard a gun fired."
Tregarthen nodded. "That"s right. I heard the shot, too, and reckoned that the man had let fly at a rabbit. He carried a gun."
"You don"t speak too respectfully of the Lord Proprietor, my friend."
"I speak as I think," answered Tregarthen, his brow darkening. "He was no friend to me or mine."
"I advise you very strongly to keep that sort of talk to yourself, at any rate for the present. To begin with, Sir Caesar is missing, and we have grave fear he will not be found again alive: so that it is not seemly. But, further, I must caution you that you parted from him using threats, and your threats have been reported."
"Turn me out of Saaron, he would--" began Tregarthen, but checked himself at the moment when pa.s.sion seemed on the point of over-mastering him. "Well, sir, I didn"t shoot him, if that"s what they are telling," he added, quietly.
"I should be sorry, indeed, to suspect any such thing. But let me tell you the rest. Hearing the shot, Leggo made good speed back to Carn Coppa. His master had disappeared; but away to the left, near the edge of the cliffs, he saw three children running down the hill, and he declares that those children were yours."
Tregarthen put up a hand and rubbed the side of his head.
"_My_ children?" he repeated. "I can"t make this out at all, sir. What could my children be doing anywhere near Carn Coppa?"
"You had best ask them."
"No," said Tregarthen, picking up his f.a.ggots, "I never brought them up to be afraid of the truth. Come with me to the house, sir, and they shall tell what they know."
He led the way, and the Commandant followed him indoors to the kitchen, where they found Ruth stooping over the great hearth, already busy with the morning fire. Across the planching overhead sounded the patter of the children"s bare feet.
In a couple of minutes they came running down together, laughing on their way, and the Commandant had to wonder again--as he had wondered before, on the afternoon when he had sailed them home from Merryman"s Head--at their beautiful manners. They were neither shy, nor embarra.s.sed. Indeed, it was the Commandant who felt embarra.s.sment (and showed it) as he asked them to tell what had taken them to Piper"s Hole, and what they had seen there.
"We saw a mermaid," answered Annet. "She was sitting on the rock outside the cove; and first she was singing to a kind of harp, and afterwards she sang as she combed her hair. And then someone fired a gun at her from the cliffs, and she disappeared, and we were frightened and ran away. We did not see who fired the gun, nor if she was wounded.
It was not brave of us to run away so quickly, and we have been sorry ever since."
"What nonsense is this?" growled their father. "Annet, my child, we tell the truth--all of us--here on Saaron."
"It may have been a seal," hazarded the Commandant. "I am told that Piper"s Hole used to be a famous spot for seals."
But Annet lifted her chin and answered, her eyes steadily raised to her father"s face. "No, it was not a seal; it was a mermaid. She sang and combed her hair just as I told you. It was beginning to grow dark, but we could see her quite plainly." She turned for confirmation to Linnet and Matthew Henry, and they both nodded.
Their father growled again that this was nonsense; but the Commandant, lifting a hand, asked what had taken them to the cliffs above Piper"s Hole. It could not (he suggested) have been that they expected to catch sight of a mermaid.
"Yes," answered Annet again; "that was just the reason." She was speaking frankly, as a child can speak; but children have their own code of honour, and it forbids them to give away a friend. "Jan was telling us, only the other day," she explained with careful lucidity, "how his father had once caught a mermaid in a pool there. We wanted very much to see one, and so we planned to go. But afterwards, when father rowed us home, we did not like to tell him about it. We were afraid he would laugh at us; and we were frightened, too; afraid that the mermaid had been hurt; and--and we were upset because father had brought the boat for us instead of Jan Nanjulian----"
"But most of all," put in Linnet, "I was upset because I had been saying that there were no such things."
"You silly children, of course there are no such things," said their mother.
But Matthew Henry, ignoring her, and more in pity than in anger, turned on the Commandant. "Are you come," he asked, "because she is hurt?"
"She? Who?"
"The mermaid. We didn"t mean to bring ill-luck to her. Jan said there was no good luck ever in spying on a mermaid, but Aunt Vazzy said that was nonsense, and of course we believed Aunt Vazzy----"
But here the child came to a full stop, startled by a swift change in the Commandant"s look, and by a sudden sharp exclamation.
"Your Aunt Vazzy?" The Commandant"s hand went up to his forehead. It seemed that, under the shadow of it his face grew pale and gray as he gazed from Matthew Henry to the two girls, and from them again to their mother.
"Ma"am," said he, in a shaking voice, "is your sister in the house?"
With his question, it seemed that in turn he had pa.s.sed on his pallor to Ruth, who, however, drew herself up and answered him with spirit.
"Sir," said Ruth Tregarthen, "you are asking too much. Must we be accountable to you for my sister"s doings?"
"For G.o.d"s sake," cried the Commandant, "let us waste no time in misunderstandings! Can you not see that your children are telling only the truth?--that she--your sister--was the mermaid? And if she did not venture home last night----"
"She took her own boat," quavered poor Ruth. "She started yesterday afternoon soon after the children had left for school--and she told me not to worry if she came home late.... My sister, sir, has queer ways of her own.... Maybe she heard the news on her way back, and has been searching all night with the others."
The Commandant had fallen to pacing the room. "She was not among the searchers," he said, impatiently. "And, moreover, she has not returned: her boat is not at the landing-quay."
"A moment, sir!" interposed Tregarthen. "I see what you fear, and it is terrible. But one thing is not plain to me at all. Vashti took her own boat, we hear. Now, suppose that the shot wounded her, or worse, still we have the boat to account for: and the boat, you say, is not to be found."
"Was ever a more hopeless mystery!" cried the Commandant, flinging out his hands.
But Eli Tregarthen turned to his wife, who had dropped into a chair by the fire and lay back, gripping the arms of it.
"Courage, wife!" said he, laying a strong palm over one of her trembling hands. "And you, sir, take my thanks; go you home, and leave the search to me."
CHAPTER XXVII
ENTER THE COMMISSIONER
It was noon, and in the Court House all the Councillors rose as the Commandant entered and took his seat.