In half an hour they were down and up across the valley again, under the few low ashes clipt flat by the sea-breeze which stood round the lonely gate of Chapel.
“Mr. Cary, there is a back path across the downs to Marsland; go and guard that.” Cary rode off; and Sir Richard, as he knocked loudly at the gate—
“Mr. Leigh, you see that I have consulted your honor, and that of your poor uncle, by adventuring thus alone. What will you have me do now, which may not be unfit for me and you?”
“Oh, sir!” said Amyas, with tears in his honest eyes, “you have shown yourself once more what you always have been—my dear and beloved master on earth, not second even to my admiral Sir Francis Drake.”
“Or the queen, I hope,” said Grenville, smiling, “but pocas palabras. What will you do?”
“My wretched cousin, sir, may not have returned—and if I might watch for him on the main road—unless you want me with you.”
“Richard Grenville can walk alone, lad. But what will you do with your cousin?”
“Send him out of the country, never to return; or if he refuses, run him through on the spot.”
“Go, lad.” And as he spoke, a sleepy voice asked inside the gate, “Who was there?”
“Sir Richard Grenville. Open, in the queen’s name?”
“Sir Richard? He is in bed, and be hanged to you. No honest folk come at this hour of night.”
“Amyas!” shouted Sir Richard. Amyas rode back.
“Burst that gate for me, while I hold your horse.”
Amyas leaped down, took up a rock from the roadside, such as Homer’s heroes used to send at each other’s heads, and in an instant the door was flat on the ground, and the serving-man on his back inside, while Sir Richard quietly entering over it, like Una into the hut, told the fellow to get up and hold his horse for him (which the clod, who knew well enough that terrible voice, did without further murmurs), and then strode straight to the front door. It was already opened. The household had been up and about all along, or the noise at the entry had aroused them.
Sir Richard knocked, however, at the open door; and, to his astonishment, his knock was answered by Mr. Leigh himself, fully dressed, and candle in hand.
“Sir Richard Grenville! What, sir! is this neighborly, not to say gentle, to break into my house in the dead of night?”
“I broke your outer door, sir, because I was refused entrance when I asked in the queen’s name. I knocked at your inner one, as I should have knocked at the poorest cottager’s in the parish, because I found it open. You have two Jesuits here, sir! and here is the queen’s warrant for apprehending them. I have signed it with my own hand, and, moreover, serve it now, with my own hand, in order to save you scandal—and it may be, worse. I must have these men, Mr. Leigh.”
“My dear Sir Richard—!”
“I must have them, or I must search the house; and you would not put either yourself or me to so shameful a necessity?”