ctions rather
than words. Soldiers were found here and there over the countryside
pistolled or stabbed, and no trace left of their assailant. A dozen or
more were cut off in this way, and soon it came to be whispered about
that Marot the highwayman was the man that did it, and the chase became
hot at his heels.'

'Well, and what then?' I asked, for Saxon had stopped to light his pipe
at the same old metal tinder-box which he had used when first I met
him. When I picture Saxon to myself it is usually of that moment that I
think, when the red glow beat upon his hard, eager, hawk-like face, and
showed up the thousand little seams and wrinkles which time and care had
imprinted upon his brown, weather-beaten skin. Sometimes in my dreams
that face in the darkness comes back to me, and his half-closed eyelids
and shifting, blinky eyes are turned towards me in his sidelong fashion,
until I find myself sitting up and holding out my hand into empty space,
half expecting to feel another thin sinewy hand close round it. A bad
man he was in many ways, my dears, cunning and wily, with little scruple
or conscience; and yet so strange a thing is human nature, and so
difficult is it for us to control our feelings, that my heart warms when
I think of him, and that fifty years have increased rather than weakened
the kindliness which I hear to him.

'I had heard,' quoth he, puffing slowly at his pipe, 'that Marot was a
man of this kidney, and also that he was so compassed round that he was
in peril of capture. I sought him out, therefore, and held council with
him. His mare, it seems, had been slain by some chance shot, and as he
was much attached to the brute, the accident made him more savage and
more dangerous than ever. He had no heart, he said, to continue in his
old trade. Indeed, he was ripe for anything--the very stuff out of which
useful tools are made. I found that in his youth he had had a training
for the sea. When I heard that, I saw my way in the snap of a petronel.'

'What then?' I asked. 'I am still in the dark.'

'Nay, it is surely plain enough to you now. Marot's end was to baffle
his pursuers and to benefit the exiles. How could he do this better than
by engaging as a seaman aboard this brig, the _Dorothy Fox_, and sailing
away from England in her? There are but thirty of a crew. Below hatches
are close on two hundred men, who, simple as they may be, are, as you
and I know, second to none in the cut-and-thrust work, w