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Updated: June 21, 2025
So you must make the best of it." The boy turned his head away and closed his eyes. Suddenly I snatched the lantern from Hogvardt. But I paused before I brought it close to the boy's face, as I had meant to do, and I said: "You fellows go and get something to eat and a snooze, if you like. I'll look after this youngster. I'll call you if anything happens outside."
At the moment I heard chairs pushed back in the kitchen. In came Hogvardt, with an amused smile on his broad face; in came Watkins, with his impassive acquiescence in anything that his lordship might order; in came Master Denny, brandishing his whip in jovial relentlessness. "Well, has he told you anything?" cried Denny. It was plain that he hoped for the answer "No."
He and his companions, namely, his cousin, Denny Swinton; his factotum, Hogvardt; and his servant, Watkins, are at once locked up; and though released soon, it is with a warning from the populace, headed by Vlacho, the innkeeper, that if found on the island after six o'clock the next morning, their lives will not be worth much.
Had I known Neopalia then as well as I came to know it afterward, I should have recognized the futility of attempting to prophesy what would happen there. As it was, we spun our cobwebs merrily all the way to Rhodes, where we arrived without event and without accident. There we picked up Hogvardt, and embarked in the smart little steam yacht which he had hired for me.
"Hurrah!" cried Denny, leaping down from his table, on fire with excitement in a moment. I faced Hogvardt. He shook his head, but he smiled. Watkins stood by, with his usual imperturbability. He wanted to know what his lordship decided, that was all; and when I said nothing more, he asked: "Then your lordship will sleep here to-night?"
"What the deuce did those rascals do with the old gentleman, Charlie?" "It says 'they went beneath the earth." "The cellar," suggested Hogvardt, who had a prosaic mind. "But they wouldn't leave the body in the cellar," I objected; "and if, as this fellow says, they were only away a few minutes, they couldn't have dug a grave for it. And then it says that they 'there in the earth found the lord'!"
I'll wake you at two, and you can wake Hogvardt at five, and Watkins will be fit and well at breakfast time, and can give us roast cow." Thus I was left alone again; and I sat, reviewing the position. Would the islanders fight for their lady? Or would they let us go?
But presently Hogvardt risked a glance, and called out that they were in retreat, and had rejoined the three, and that the whole body stood together in consultation, and were no longer covering my window. So I looked out, and saw the boy standing in an easy, graceful attitude, while Constantine and Vlacho talked a little apart.
When they know what a villain the fellow is, they'll turn against him. Besides, we said we'd wait here." Denny seized on my last words with alacrity. When you are determined to do a rash thing, there is great comfort in feeling that you are already committed to it by some previous act or promise. "So we did," he cried. "Then that settles it, Hogvardt."
Then I went and sat in the hall, expecting that Euphrosyne would appear from her room before long. I was alone, for the rest were engaged in various occupations, Hogvardt being particularly busy over a large handful of hunting-knives that he had gleaned from the walls; I did not understand what he wanted with them, unless he meant to arm himself in porcupine fashion.
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