Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/79

 schoolmaster. "He wants you to come at once; there's somebody dying in the parish."

"Do you know who it is?" said the physician.

"I believe it's old Mrs. Tapsole in the Bake House, but I'm none too sure."

Indeed it seemed to Jerk that uncertainty was the whole attitude of the schoolmaster. He seemed to be listening to the distant noise of galloping and answering old Sennacherib at random. Perhaps the physician also noticed something in his manner, for he looked at him pretty straight and said:

"I don't think it's Mrs. Tapsole, either, for I saw her to-day and she was as merry as a cricket."

"She's had a fit, sir, that's about what she's had," replied the schoolmaster vaguely.

"Then," said the physician, "you do know something about it, do you?"

"I know just what I was asked to say," returned the schoolmaster irritably. "It's not my business to tell you what's the matter with your patients. If you don't know, I'm sure I don't. You're a doctor, ain't you?"

No doubt old Pepper would have pulled the schoolmaster up with a good round turn for his boorishness and extraordinary manner had he not at that instant caught the sound of the galloping horses. "Look there!" he cried.

At full gallop across the Marsh were going a score or