horn sounded loudly, and every soul in Sendennis knew that the coach was in.

[Pg 84]

In a moment everything was changed. The Captain took his hand from my shoulder; the girl took her gaze from my face. There was a clatter of wheels, a trampling of horses’ hoofs. The coach had drawn up in front of the inn door. We three—my Captain, the girl, and myself—ran across the hall and out on the portico. There was the usual crowd about the newly arrived coach; but there was only one person in the crowd for whom we looked, and him we soon found.

A lithe figure in a buff travelling coat swung off the box-seat, and Lancelot was with us again. He had an arm around the girl’s neck, and kissed her with no heed of the people; he had a hand clasped between the two hands of the Captain, who squeezed his fingers fondly. Then he looked at me, and leaving his kindred he caught both my hands in both his, while his joy shone in his eyes.

‘Raphael, my old Raphael, is it you?’ he said; ‘but my heart is glad of this.’ 

[Pg 85]

[Pg 85]

I wrung his hands. I could scarcely speak for happiness at seeing him again.

‘You must not call him Raphael any more,’ the girl said demurely. ‘He is to be Ralph now, for all of us, so my uncle says.’

‘Is that so?’ said Lancelot, looking up at the Captain. ‘Well, we must obey orders, and indeed I would rather have Ralph than Raphael. ’Tis less of an outlandish name.’

Then we all laughed, and we all came back into the hall of the inn together.

I watched Lancelot with wonder and with pride. He had grown amazingly in the years since I had seen him, and carried himself like a man. He was handsomer than ever I thought, and liker to our island’s patron saint. As he stripped off his travelling coat and stood up in the neat habit of a well-to-do town gentleman, he looked such a cavalier as no woman but would wish for a lover, no man but desire for a friend.

‘Lads and lass,’ said Captain Amber, ‘it will soon be time to dine. We have waited dinner for this scapegrace’—and he pinched Lancelot’s ear—‘so get the dust of travel off as quickly as may be, and we will sit down with good appetite.’

At these words I made to go away, for I did not [Pg 

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