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He is Sir Ralph Rooksby of Horton Priory in Kent." I did keep cool; I was lucid; I spoke like that. I had my eyes fixed on the face of the young girl upon the bench. I remember it so well. Her eyes were fixed, fascinated, upon my hand. I tried to move it, and found that it was stuck upon the spike on which I had jammed it.
I felt hands fumbling with a knot at the back of my head. "You're all right," he said again. The hubbub of voices ceased suddenly. "Now, lads, bring 'em along." A voice I knew said their watchword, "Snuff and enough," loudly, and then, "What's agate?" Someone else answered, "It's Rooksby, it's Sir Ralph." The voice interrupted sharply, "No names, now. I don't want hanging."
Our farm nestled down under the steep, brown downs, just beside the Roman road to Canterbury; Stone Street the Street we called it. Ralph's land was just on the other side of the Street, and the shepherds on the downs used to see of nights a dead-and-gone Rooksby, Sir Peter that was, ride upon it past the quarry with his head under his arm.
"Your brother-in-law, my cousin Rooksby, was the very first to believe that I was a pirate. I, a vulgar pirate! I, Carlos Riego! Did he not believe it and you?" He glanced a little ironically, and lifted a thin white finger towards the great coat-of-arms. "That sort of thing," he said, "amigo mio, does not allow one to pick pockets."
I'd blow them, and take the reward, but for you and Squahre Rooksby. They're handy with their knives, too, I fancy. You mind me, and look to yourself with them. There's something unnatural." His words had a certain effect upon me, and his manner perhaps more.
Veronica was very beautiful, and very gentle, and very kind; tall, slim, with sloping white shoulders and long white arms, hair the colour of amber, and startled blue eyes a good mate for Rooksby. Rooksby had foreign relations, too. The uncle from whom he inherited the Priory had married a Riego, a Castilian, during the Peninsular war.
It seemed unjust that she should go out into the great world to Bath, to Brighton, should see the Prince Regent and the great fights on Hounslow Heath whilst I was to remain forever a farmer's boy. That afternoon I was upstairs, looking at the reflection of myself in the tall glass, wondering miserably why I seemed to be such an oaf. The voice of Rooksby hailed me suddenly from downstairs.
That's where I want to go, and he could give me a cast. You remember what Tomas Castro said. . . ." Rooksby came to a sudden halt, and began furiously to switch his corded legs. "Curse Carlos, and his Castro, too. They'll have me in jail betwixt them. They're both in my red barn, if you want their direction. . . ." He hurried on suddenly up the hill, leaving me gazing upwards at him.
I began to wonder what Rooksby would have thought of this sort of thing, to wonder why Castro himself found it necessary to crouch for such a long time. Up above, the hum of many people, still laughing, still talking, faded a little out of mind. I understood, horribly, how possible it would be to die within those few feet of them.
I remembered a hundred little things now that I knew that Carlos loved Veronica. I understood Rooksby's jealous impatience, Veronica's friendly glances at Carlos, the fact that Rooksby had proposed to Veronica on the very day that Carlos had come again into the neighbourhood with the runners after him.
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