ch you gadding.... You will think on what you have
heard to-night, and will come to me again as soon as you can make
opportunity?"

"Yes," said Landless slowly. "I will come, but I make no promises."

He found Porringer seated in their boat, patiently awaiting him. They
cast off and rowed back the way they had come through the stillness of
the hour before dawn. The tide being full, the black banks had
disappeared, and the grass, sighing and whispering, waved on a level
with their boat. When they slid at last into the broader waters of the
inlet, the stars were paling, and in the east there gleamed a faint rose
tint, the ghost of a color. A silver mist lay upon land and water, and
through it they stole undetected to their several cabins.

Meanwhile the two men, left alone in the hut on the marsh, looked one
another in the face.

"Are you sure that he can be trusted?" demanded Carrington.

"I would answer for his father's son with my life."

"What of these scruples of his? Faith! an unusual conjunction--a convict
and scruples! Will you manage to dispose of them?"

Godwyn smiled with wise, sad eyes. "Time will dispose of them," he said
quietly. "He is new to the life. Let him taste its full bitterness. It
will plead powerfully against his--scruples. He has as yet no special
and private grievance. Wait until he gets into trouble with Woodson or
his master. When he has done that and has taken the consequences, he
will be ours. We can bide our time."

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEW SECRETARY

"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I flee....

"Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore.
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."

The rich notes rang higher and higher, filling the languid air, and
drowning the trill of the mockingbirds. Patricia, filling her apron with
midsummer flowers, sang with a careless passion, her mind far away in
the midst of a Whitehall pageant, described to her the night before by
that silver-tongued courtier, Sir Charles Carew.

Still singing, she went up the steps of the porch and into the cool wide
hall. In her face there was a languorous beauty born of the sunshine
outside; a soft color glowed in her cheeks, her eyes were large and
dreamy, little da