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The officers were plainly disconcerted by the affability of Mr. Mitchelbourne’s reply. They had evidently expected to carry off a triumph, not to be taken up in an argument. They had planned a stroke of the theatre, final and convincing, and behold the dialogue went on! There was a riposte to their thrust.

The spokesman made some gruff noises in his throat. Then his face cleared.

“These are dialectics,” he said superbly with a wave of the hand.

“Good,” said the little dark fellow at his elbow, “very good!”

The youth at the door nodded superciliously towards Mitchelbourne.

“True, these are dialectics,” said he with a smack of the lips upon the word. It was a good cunning scholarly word, and the man who could produce it so aptly worthy of admiration.

“You make a further error, gentlemen,” continued Mitchelbourne, “you no doubt are expecting some one, but you were most certainly not expecting me. For I am here by the purest mistake, having been misdirected on the way.” Here the three men smiled to each other, and their spokesman retorted with a chuckle.

“Misdirected, indeed you were. We took precautions that you should be. A servant of mine stationed at the parting of the roads. But we are forgetting our manners,” he added rising from his chair. “You should know our names. The gentleman at the door is Cornet Lashley, this is Captain Bassett and I am Major Chantrell. We are all three of Trevelyan’s regiment.”

“And my name,” said Mitchelbourne, not to be outdone in politeness, “is Lewis Mitchelbourne, a gentleman of the County of Middlesex.”

At this each of the officers was seized with a fit of laughter; but before Mitchelbourne had time to resent their behavior, Major Chantrell said indulgently:

“Well, well, we shall not quarrel about names. At all events we all four are lately come from Tangier.”

“Oh, from Tangier,” cried Mitchelbourne. The riddle was becoming clear. That extraordinary siege when a handful of English red-coats unpaid and ill-fed fought a breached and broken town against countless hordes for the honour of their King during twenty years, had not yet become the property of the historian. It was still an actual war in 1681. Mitchelbourne understood whence came the sunburn on his antagonists’ faces, whence the stains and the worn seams of their clothes. He advanced to the table and spoke with a greater respect than he had used.

“Did one of you,” he asked, “leave a Moorish pipe behind you at an inn of Saxmundham?”

“Ah,” said the Major with a reproachful glance at Captain Bassett. The Captain answered with some discomfort:

“Yes. I made that mistake. But what does it matter? You are here none the less.”

“You have with you some of the Moorish tobacco?” continued Mitchelbourne.

Captain Bassett fetched out of his pocket a little canvas bag, and handed it to Mitchelbourne, who untied the string about the neck, and poured some of the contents into the palm of his hand. The tobacco was a fine, greenish seed.

“I thought as much,” said Mitchelbourne, “you expected Mr. Lance to-night. It is Mr. Lance whom you thought to misdirect to this solitary house. Indeed Mr. Lance spoke of such a place in this neighbourhood, and had a mind to buy it.”

Captain Bassett suddenly raised his hand to his mouth, not so quickly, however, but Mitchelbourne saw the grim, amused smile upon his lips. “It is Mr. Lance for whom you now mistake me,” he said abruptly.

The young man at the door uttered a short, contemptuous laugh, Major Chantrell only smiled.

“I am aware,” said he, “that we meet for the first time to-night, but you presume upon that fact too far. What have you to say to this?” And dragging a big and battered pistol from his pocket, he tossed it upon the table, and folded his arms in the best transpontine manner.

“And to this?” said Captain Bassett. He laid a worn leather powder flask beside the pistol, and tapped upon the table triumphantly.