Margaret and I must now follow her
father. The Stuart cause is smashed to pieces."
* * * * *
Late that night I stood with Margaret on the end of a jetty in a little
fishing village on the Cumberland coast. Master Freake was giving final
instructions to the owner of a herring-buss that was creaking noisily
against the side of the jetty under the swell of the tide. Dot was busily
handing to one of her crew of two certain packages for my use.
We stood together, and she had linked her arm in mine. We who had been so
close together for a month were now to have an ocean put between us. Not
that that mattered to me, already separated from her by something wider
than the Atlantic, a lonely unnamed grave away there in Staffordshire.
Suddenly she called to Dot, and he, as knowing just what she wanted,
brought her a box. She loosed her arm from mine and took it from him, and
when I would in turn have relieved her of it, she gently refused.
"Oliver," she said, in quiet, firm tones, "you met me when I was in grave
danger and immediately, like the gallant gentleman you are, left mother
and home to do me service.
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