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Updated: June 6, 2025
They chose their billets in the barns, hay-lofts, granaries, the cider-house, even the empty cattle-stalls, and under the brisk captaincy of Trevarthen fell to work stockading the weak spots in the defence and piercing loopholes in the outer walls.
The fog had concealed from the Sheriff that he was fighting, as his predecessor had fought, within a ring of spectators many hundreds in number; and to-day not a few of these spectators had brought guns. It is said that in the hottest of the fray Trevarthen broke out from the rear of Steens and marshalled them.
"We'll see about that by-and-by," said Roger grimly. "You've helped do me a favour, and I'll cry quits with you and your brother for't. But I want no more of you or your haveage: yon's the door walk!" "Oh, if that's how you take it," Nat Rodda shrugged his shoulders and obeyed, his brother at his heels. One or two of the men would have interfered, but Trevarthen checked them.
With a parting nod she started off along the ribbon of road which wound its way past the gates of Trevarthen Wood, and then, dipping into the valley, climbed the hill beyond and lost itself in the broad highway of light which shimmered from the western sky. Presently she turned aside from the road and, scrambling through a gap in a stone wall, plunged into the cool shadows of the woods.
Then Trevarthen went on to tell for the wonders of the day were not over how on their homeward road they had caught up with a messenger from Truro hurrying towards Steens, with word that the new Sheriff was already on the march with a regiment drawn off from the barracks at Plymouth, and had reached Bodmin. In two days' time they might find themselves besieged again.
Had Roger, as the sound of hoofs reached him, supposed it to be Trevarthen's troop returning, he might yet have persisted. But Trevarthen had ridden towards Helleston, and these horsemen came apparently out of the north. His thoughts flew at once to a surprise, and he shouted to Pascoe and Malachi to get their guns and hurry to their posts. The youth at his feet lay in a swoon of terror.
His sense of gratitude had kept him unusually amiable, and when a sullen fit took him his lieutenant Trevarthen had served for an admirable buffer. Trevarthen was always cheerful. But since Roger had tasted blood Trevarthen and Malachi agreed that his temper had entirely changed. He was, in fact, mad; and daily growing madder with confinement and brooding.
It was a meeting of extremes, and since Gabrielle had drooped and pined in the bleak northern castle where the lairds of Tarn had dwelt from time immemorial, McDermot laid even his ancestral home upon love's altar and, coming south, had bought Trevarthen Wood, a tree-girt, sheltered house no great distance from Mallow, though further inland.
Stephen's room the two men shook hands, and Trevarthen hurried down to go the round of his posts in the out-buildings. They never saw one another again. Roger hesitated a moment, then tapped at the door. After a long pause Jane opened it with a scared face. She whispered with him, and he turned and went heavily down the stairs; another moan from within followed him.
Since her husband's death, however, Eliza, chiding herself the while for her weakness, had yielded to a pulsing young enthusiasm that would not be denied, and music of a secular nature was permitted at Trevarthen unchecked though disapproved. Thus it came about that on the afternoon of Nan's visit Sandy was to be found zealously absorbed in the composition of a triumphal march.
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