r we shall bring you back shall be kept as secret as
the commonweal and your loyalty shall permit. I trust that we are not so
unknown to you, or to others, that you can doubt for a moment but that
whatsoever we may do will satisfy at once your honor and our own."

"My dear young gentleman, there is no need of so many courtier's words.
I am your father's friend, and yours. And God forbid that a Cary--for I
guess your drift--should ever wish to make a head or a heart ache; that
is, more than--"

"Those of whom it is written, 'Though thou bray a fool in a mortar, yet
will not his folly depart from him,'" interposed Frank, in so sad a tone
that no one at the table replied; and few more words were exchanged,
till the two brothers were safe outside the house; and then--

"Amyas," said Frank, "that was a Devon man's handiwork, nevertheless; it
was Eustace's handwriting."

"Impossible!"

"No, lad. I have been secretary to a prince, and learnt to interpret
cipher, and to watch every pen-stroke; and, young as I am, I think that
I am not easily deceived. Would God I were! Come on, lad; and strike no
man hastily, lest thou cut off thine own flesh."

So forth the two went, along the park to the eastward, and past the
head of the little wood-embosomed fishing-town, a steep stair of houses
clinging to the cliff far below them, the bright slate roofs and white
walls glittering in the moonlight; and on some half-mile farther, along
the steep hill-side, fenced with oak wood down to the water's edge, by
a narrow forest path, to a point where two glens meet and pour their
streamlets over a cascade some hundred feet in height into the sea
below. By the side of this waterfall a narrow path climbs upward from
the beach; and here it was that the two brothers expected to meet the
messenger.

Frank insisted on taking his station below Amyas. He said that he was
certain that Eustace himself would make his appearance, and that he
was more fit than Amyas to bring him to reason by parley; that if Amyas
would keep watch some twenty yards above, the escape of the messenger
would be impossible. Moreover, he was the elder brother, and the post of
honor was his right. So Amyas obeyed him, after making him promise that
if more than one man came up the path, he would let them pass him before
he challenged, so that both might bring them to bay at the same time.

So Amyas took his station under a high marl bank, and, bedded in
luxuriant crown-ferns,