Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/252

At something in the man’s manner, the full truth dawned on Philip Marsham. “I see. And you have taken the inn?”

“Yea, that I have! Must I split thy head to let in knowledge? Begone!”

She laid her hand on Barwick’s wrist. ‘‘The lad means no harm,” she whispered. ‘‘Come, it is folly to drive trade away.” And over Barwick’s shoulder she cast Phil such a glance that he knew, maid or matron, she would philander still.

But Phil had seen her with new eyes and the old charm was broken. (Perhaps if Tom Marsham had waited a year before he leaped into marriage, I had had no story to tell!) All that was best in the father had come down to the son, and Phil turned his back on the siren with the bold, bright eyes. He turned his back on the inn, too, and all the dreams he had built around it — a boy’s imaginings raised on the sands of a moment’s fancy. Nay, he turned his back on all the world he had hitherto known.

With a feeling that he was rubbing from his face a spider’s web of sordidness, — that he was cutting the last cord that bound him to his old, wild life, — stirred by a new and daring project, he went out of the inn and turned to the left and took the road in search of Sir John Bristol.