“‘I owe you an apology, Captain,’ said he.  ’To be plain with you, at the moment you appeared, I was half expecting a different kind of visitor, and I fear you received some of the welcome prepared for him.  Overlook it, please, and shake hands; and, to get our business over,’—­he unlocked the cashbox—­’here are ten guineas, which I will ask you to accept from me.  We won’t call it a gift; we will call it an acknowledgement for the extra pains you have put into teaching my son.  Tut, man!’ said he, as I protested.  ’Harry has told us all about that.  I assure you the youngster came near to wearying us, last holiday, with praise of you.’”

“And so he did,” Plinny here interrupted.  “That is to say, sir—­I—­I mean we were only too glad to listen to him.”

“I thank you, ma’am.”  Captain Branscome bowed to her gravely.  “I will not deny that the Major’s words gave me pleasure for the moment.  He, for his part, appeared to be quite another man.  ’Twas as if between leaving me and returning to the summer-house a load had been lifted from his mind.  He counted out the guineas, locked the cashbox again, lit his pipe, and then, seeming to recollect himself, reached down a clean one from a stack above the doorway, and insisted upon my filling and smoking with him.  ’Twas a long while since I had tasted the luxury of tobacco.  We talked of old days on the Londonderry, of Sir John Moore’s last campaign, of Falmouth and the packets, of the peace and the overthrow of Bonaparte’s ambitions; or, rather, ’twas he that talked and questioned, while for me ’twas pleasure enough, and a pleasure long denied me, to sit on terms with a well-read gentleman and listen to talk of a quality which—­”

“Which differed from that of the Rev. Philip Stimcoe’s,” suggested Miss Belcher, as he hesitated.  “Proceed, sir.”

“I shall add, madam, that the Major very kindly invited me to sleep that night under his roof.  I could pick up the coach in the morning (he said).  But this I declined, professing that I preferred the night for travelling, and maybe, before tiring myself, would overtake one of Russell’s waggons and obtain a lift; the fact being that, grateful though I found it to sit and converse with him, my conscience was accusing me all the while.

“Towards the end of our talk he had let slip by accident that he was by no means a rich man.  The money from that moment began to burn in my pockets, and I had scarcely shaken hands with him and taken my leave—­which I did just as the sun was sinking behind the plantation across the lane—­before his guineas fairly scorched me.  I held on my way for a mile or more.  You may have observed, ladies, that I limp in my walk?  It is the effect of an old wound.  But, I declare to you, my limp was nothing to the thought I dragged with me—­the recollection of the Major’s face and the expression that had come over it when I had first confessed my errand.  All his subsequent kindness, his sympathy, his hospitality, his frank and easy talk, could not wipe out that recollection.  I had sold something which for years it had been my pride to keep.  I had forced it on an unwilling buyer.  I had taken the money of a poor man, and had given him in exchange—­what?  You remember, ladies, those words of Shakespeare—­ good words, although he puts them into the mouth of a villain—­that: