Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/29

It was strange, he thought, that after all his doubts, he was well fed and dry and warm. The rain rattled against the walls of the smithy and the wind howled. Only to hear the storm was enough to make a man shiver, but warmed by the fire in the forge the lad smiled and nodded. In a moment he was asleep.

“Cam’ ye far?” his host asked in a rough voice.

The lad woke with a start. “From London,” he said and again he nodded.

The man ran his fingers through his red beard. “God forgie us!” he whispered. “The laddie ha grapit a’ the way frae Lon’on.”

He got up from his chair and led Phil to a kind of bed in the darkest corner, behind the forge, and covered him and left him there. Going to the door he looked out into the rain and stood so for a long time.

Two boys, scurrying past in the rain, saw him standing there against the dim light of the lanthorn, and hooted in derision. The wind swept away their voices so that the words were lost, but one stooped and, picking up a stone, flung it at the smithy. It struck the lintel above the man’s head and the boys with a squeal of glee vanished into the rain and darkness. The blood rushed to the man’s face and his hand slipped under the great leathern apron that he wore.

By morning the storm was gone. The air was clean and cool, and though puddles of water stood by the way, the road had so far dried as to give good footing. All this Philip Marsham saw through the smithy door, upon waking, as he raised himself on his elbow.

He had slept that night with his head behind the cupboard and with his feet under the great bellows of the forge, so narrow was the space in which the smith had