Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/232

 Esq., attorney-at-law from Rye, a man of sixty-five years, but upright and alert as any young man. He was attired in a bottle-green coat, black satin breeches, silk stockings, silver-buckled shoes, and faultless linen. His gray wig, tied concisely with a black ribbon, completed a true picture of the law: a man to desire for one's defence, a man to dread for one's accusation.

The captain received him at the door of the inn and conducted him to the privacy of his own bedchamber.

There he unburdened his mind to the lawyer, stating all his suspicions and clearly showing how he had arrived at them. By the end of the morning they thoroughly understood each other, the lawyer returning by coach to Rye with orders to the governor of the castle to prepare accommodation for a large number of prisoners and to see to it that there were chains enough to hang 'em to. But, strange to relate, that lawyer in bottle green never reached the little town of Rye, for his coach stopped at a certain farmhouse beyond Romney. Here he alighted to make room for another lawyer, a real lawyer, a man of sixty-five, who had left Rye that very morning to consult with a certain Captain Collyer residing at the Ship Inn, Dymchurch. This lawyer had, needless to say, never arrived at Dymchurch. For at a lonely spot on the road outside Romney a strong body of men had awaited the arrival of his coach. While two or three of them removed the driver from his box to the farmhouse, where they speedily made him drunk,