So that, upon the whole, one would judge Roboshobery Dove a retired seaman with rustic connections, which guess would be correct.

The sun grew redder in the haze, and the Thurrock hills bit into its lower edge; the Leigh roofs were duller, and the sea-line to the east was lost in the rising grey. Down in the coppice shadows grew thick, and the light was gone from the tops of the tallest thorns. Nests were settling to rest with diminishing twitters, save where a nightingale, hoarse with summer, began his broken song. A rabbit peeped out on the hillside, scampered three yards madly, and stopped to nibble; and another joined it. Then the sun was a mere fiery edge above the mist, and in the east a speck of light broke out in the gathering dark. At that the watcher took his eye from the telescope and shut the instrument hastily. The Nore Light had recalled him to a sense of time. The wooden leg was on the stump and buckled in scarce three movements, and Roboshobery Dove, with an agility characterised rather than hampered by the rigid limb, scrambled to the ground and hurried off toward the lane behind the hill. For though, of course, wooden leg notwithstanding, he was afraid of nothing and nobody, and the old women’s tales of the bedevilment about the castle after dark were not seriously to be considered, still there was no need to stay now that it was growing too dark to see a sail a mile away. And moreover, there was news to tell, for three Russian vessels—mere brigs, it was true—had been taken past the Grain Spit scarce two hours back.

The lane was low and dark in the hollow behind the hill. Thence it climbed gently, throughout its half-mile of length, to Hadleigh village. Early on the way a cottage looked down from a bank, and at its garden rail a girl stood.

Roboshobery Dove raised his telescope and hailed, though, indeed, the girl had been watching for him. “Three,” he said. “Three through in the art’noon. But no good—coastin’ brigs an’ that. Wonnerful few good prizes lately—took ‘em all, I count.”

“No frigate?” The girl’s voice was subdued but anxious.

“Frigate? O—convoy, you mean. Lor’ sink me, no. They woan’t send frigates to mind a row o’ wash-tubs. Ye woan’t see the Phyllis this side o’ October—more like November.” Roboshobery grinned, and wasted a wink in the gloom, for he understood. Then, as the girl turned at a sharp call from the cottage, he went his way up the lane.

Bats flitted over his head, and followed him as he tramped the steadily-rising path, but no other living thing came near till he stood on higher ground than the castle hill, and was within stone-throw of Hadleigh street. For the dark castle lane was no popular resort after dusk. One might meet the White Lady, or perhaps her victim, Wryneck Sal, and there was the man that hanged himself in the castle barn. True, the year was 1854, and in London everybody was surprisingly enlightened, and all a great deal wiser and more knowing than any of their fathers before them. But Hadleigh, thirty-seven miles from London by road, was a century away in thought and manners; it knew nothing of the railway beyond what the literate among the village fathers might read in an old copy of the Chelmsford Chronicle: sowed beans with a dibble: was generally much as it was in King Charles’s time: and had not discovered its forefathers to have been fools. Indeed, when at last the railway actually came in sight a mile away on the marshes below, it brought no station to disturb Hadleigh, but went its journey and left the village to sleep for another thirty years.

So that Roboshobery Dove met nobody in the lane—not even the White Lady nor the Black Man—till he had topped the rise and was again out of darkness and in twilight. But here he spied a friend, and hailed again.

“Steve, O! Steve Lingood, ahoy!”

The man stopped and turned; a tall, hard fellow of twenty-eight, in a fur cap and leather apron; a smith visibly, and nothing but a smith.

“Well,” he asked, “news?”

“Three little ‘uns—nothen but shore-scrapers; come to the pot-rakin’s, ‘twould seem. Banham ha’n’t brote in a paper, hev he?”

“Banham ha’n’t been out—the gal’s that bad young Dick took the cart.”

“War, war, bloody war, north, south, east, an’ west—an’ Banham stops home to nuss a big gal, ‘stead o’ goin’ to Chelmsford reg’lar an’ bringin’ a paper o’ noos! But to-morrow’s fair day, an’ there’s sure to be some brote in. What’s so bad with the gal?”

“Dunno. Sort o’ allovers, ‘twould seem. Banham, he’s gone to Cunnin’ Murrell, an’ Murrell’s brote me a little job over it.”

“Iron bottle?”

Lingood nodded.

“Witchcraft an’ deviltry! Well, he’s a wise ‘un, that’s sarten; but I don’t count to hev nor make with sich truck.”

“That’s as it fare. To me it’s shilluns an’ pence—no more. Though I’ve ‘arned it this day, double, an’ done nothen.