Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/310

 and as Doctor Syn had left a will leaving everything to Imogene, Sir Antony stretched a point and kept matters to himself, for he was afraid that the wealth would drift to the Crown by law. However, as Leveller of the Marsh Scotts, he found that it was easy enough to hush affairs up, for the French war was in everybody's mind. So eventually Denis married the daughter of the Incan princess, the adopted daughter of Mrs. Whyllie of Rye, though Sir Antony could never really prove her origin, but he would never admit even to himself that most probably Doctor Syn had been romancing. The secret of England's treasure died with Clegg, but whether that was only a lying excuse of the scoundrel to get away from Dymchurch, the squire could never make out. Jerry Jerk grew up and became the Maidstone hangman, and Dymchurch remained under the wall. But although Doctor Syn was succeeded by more righteous vicars, none was so popular as he had been, and the few Dymchurch men who survived the French war missed the long extempore prayers on a Sunday and the dry-as-dust sermons preached by a man who was a man before he became either a parson or a scoundrel, for scoundrelism is after all only a point of view of some community, and Dymchurch folk would have welcomed back Syn knowing that he was Clegg, because they all knew him to be a daring, dashing fellow and a dear old man.

Dymchurch is very quiet again, and the wild