Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/252

 THE CAPTAIN'S EXPERIMENT

HEY entered the vicarage by the back door and found the bo'sun roasting chestnuts on the bars of the kitchen fire. There was another man there, with his back to the door, and by his black clothes and scholarly stoop Jerry recognized the vicar. So quietly had the captain opened the door that neither of the men roasting chestnuts was aware of their presence. They went on roasting the nuts, when an astonishing thing happened: The vicar, in trying to take out a hot chestnut from the bar, knocked three of the bo'sun's into the red-hot coals, which so enraged the bo'sun that he administered with his forearm a resounding clump on the back of the cleric's head. Jerry thought this a distinct liberty, but the vicar only laughed, and when he turned round Jerry saw that it was Morgan Walters dressed in an entire clerical suit, and not Doctor Syn at all.

Morgan Walters looked sheepish and uncomfortable when he beheld the captain, but the latter remarked that his "get-up" was magnificent, and that his black hair, which had been carefully sprinkled by the bo'sun