The man, lying on his back, smiled up at him.
How strong he was! how young! and how handsome!
Tears still bedewed his lashes, and his eyes had the sparkle and colour of the sword he wore at his side.
"What have you got between those nice milk-teeth of yours, Little Chap?"
"Nothing for you," stammered the boy. "That is--only eggs. I"ve been birds-nesting. Let go, please. I must get home. I"m late. I"ll get into a row as it is."
The other loosed his wrists suddenly; a long arm swept about him; the thumb and forefinger of a hand like a steel-vice pressed his jaws asunder.
"Parrdon," said a voice, half tender, half teasing, the roll of the r for the first time betraying an alien strain.
Perforce the boy must open.
The scent-bottle rolled out upon the gra.s.s, and trundled towards the edge.
Lithe as a panther, the young man pounced and s.n.a.t.c.hed it.
As he did so, Kit leapt on his back.
"Give it up or I dirk!" he panted.
For all answer the man fell back on top of him with the merriest laughter.
The boy"s breath was shaken out of him. Two hands loosed his; and he was left gasping on his back.
"I say! did I hurt you?" came an anxious voice.
Kit scrambled to his feet.
"Give it up!" he cried pa.s.sionately, thrusting out a hand. "It was given me. It"s a trust."
"It"s only eggs," the other reminded him, twinkling.
"I don"t care what it is!" cried the boy. "It"s mine!"
He was almost in tears, stamping his foot, much as in old days when Gwen, a born tease, had stolen his woolly bear, and refused to give it up.
The man made him feel like a baby--he, a King"s officer.
"Forgive me," replied the other. "It is mine."
"Finding"s keeping, I suppose!" sneered the boy, ablaze. "You take it by brute force--you steal it--and it"s yours! And I daresay you call yourself a gentleman!"
"When I said it was mine," replied the other with the grave tenderness of a gentleman dealing with an angry woman, "I meant it was mine. It was given me by a lady. These are her initials on the stopper--E.H., d"you see?--If I was to surrender this bottle to you, two things would happen. My work of weeks past would be undone, and a n.o.ble woman would be hung unjustly." He put the bottle into his pocket. "And now to prove to you that it really is mine I will tell you what it contains, shall I?--A letter on tissue paper signed A. F. Is it not so?"
The flames in the boy"s soul were beaten back.
"How d"you know?" sullenly.
"I wrote it."
Breathing through his nostrils, Kit eyed him.
"Then you"re the Gentleman."
The young man bowed with an action that was altogether French.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE DEAD WOMAN
I
He stood bareheaded in the sun in long black riding-coat and muddied boots and breeches.
"What"s that red riband in your b.u.t.ton-hole?" asked the boy in a kind of awe.
"That! that"s the Legion of Honour." He came a step forward. "Put your finger on it. That little bit of riband once lay upon the heart of Napoleon."
The boy began to tremble. That tiny square of red from which he could not take his eyes had once throbbed to the heart-beats of the Arch- enemy!
"D"you know him?"
"Little Boney!" laughing. "Yes, I know him."
The boy listened without hearing. It was all too dreamlike.
"D"you--d"you like him?"
The other chuckled.
"_Like_ him?--I don"t know that I exactly _like_ him. You see he"s not what you and I should call a gentleman. Still he serves me, so I serve him."
The boy"s thumb was to his mouth, baby-like. All his anger had pa.s.sed.
He was gazing at the other with brooding admiration.
This was the man who had kept three counties agog these two months past!
He was an enemy, but O! he was a hero.
Strangely young too, almost a boy; tall and slight as his own sword, the grey eyes big under dark brows, the face sun-golden and lean almost to gauntness.