Jack Rogers; "and I'd best be off to
Falmouth and get the bills printed at once."
"Indeed?" said Miss Belcher, dryly. "And pray how are you proposing
to describe him?"
"Why, as for that, I should have thought Harry's description here,
backed up by Mr. Goodfellow's, was enough to lay a trail upon any
man. My dear Lydia, a fellow roaming the country in a red coat,
drill trousers, and a japanned hat!"
"It would obviously excite remark: so obviously that the likelihood
might even occur to the man himself."
Mr. Rogers looked crestfallen for a moment.
"You suggest that by this time he has changed his rig?"
"I suggest, rather, that he started by changing it, say, as far back
as St. Mawes. Some one must ride to St. Mawes at once and make
inquiries." Miss Belcher drummed her fingers on the table.
"But the man," she said thoughtfully, "will have reached Plymouth
long before this."
"You don't think it possible he went back the same way he came?"
"In a world, Jack, where you find yourself a magistrate, all things
are possible. But I don't think it at all likely."
"It's a rum story altogether," mused Mr. Rogers. "A couple of
murders in this part of the world, and mixed up with an island full
of treasure! Why, damme, 'tis almost like Shakespeare!"
"For my part," observed Miss Plinlimmon, with great simplicity,
"though sometimes accused of leaning unduly toward the romantic, I
should be inclined to set down this story of Captain Coffin's to
hallucination, or even to stigmatize it as what I believe is called
in nautical parlance 'a yarn.
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