R."

"Was Mr. Rogers going to Plymouth?" I asked.

"Yes, and in a hurry, by the pace he was driving."

As you may guess, this news discomposed me. Could Mr. Rogers be
preparing a trap? No: certainly not for me. Whitmore, if anyone, was
his quarry. But I mistrusted that, if he once started this game, it
would lead him on to another scent. That Archibald Plinlimmon was
innocent of the Jew's murder I felt sure. Still--what had he been
seeking on the roofs by the Jew's house? It would be an ugly
question, if Mr. Rogers blundered on it; and in the way of honest
blundering I felt Mr. Rogers to be infinitely capable. Would that,
trusting in his good nature, I had made a clean breast to him!

A clean breast? Isabel too, poor girl, was aching to make confession
to her father. For weeks her secret had been a sword within her,
wearing the flesh, and it eased her somewhat (as I saw) even to have
made confession to me. But she would not speak to her father without
first consulting Archibald. It was he, I gathered, who had enjoined
silence. Major Brooks (and small blame to him) would assuredly
have imposed a probation: old men with lovely daughters do not
surrender them at call to penniless youths, even when the penniless
youth happens to be the son of an old friend. I wished Master
Archibald to perdition for a selfish fool.

I talked long with Isabel: first in the kitchen, and again on our way
back to the summer-house, where her father sat awake and expecting
me, book in hand.

There she left me, and he began to dictate at once as I settled
myself to write.

"First, then, for site. Seek, and instal your Bee
Where nor may winds invade (for winds forbid
His homeward load); nor sheep, nor heady kid
Trample the flowers; nor blundering heifer pass,
Brush off the dew and bruise the tender grass;
Nor lizard foe in painted armour prowl
Round the rich hives. Ban him, ban every fowl--
Bee-bird with Procne of the bloodied breast:
These rifle all--our Hero with the rest,
Snapped on the wing and haled, a tit-bit, to the nest.
--But seek a green moss'd pool, with well-spring nigh;
And through the turf a streamlet fleeting by."

So much, with interminably slow pauses, we accomplished before the
light waned in the summer-house and Isabel called us in to supper,
which we ate together in a low-ceiled parlour overlooking the garden.
At a quarter to nine, on pretenc