Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/97

 "You should know that better than we do," returned the squire hotly, "for that the murderer was under your employment is fairly obvious."

"You are referring to the mulatto seaman," said the captain. "In the first place, I consider that you should have asked my permission before you issued that public notice affixed to the church door. Until the mulatto is found and can be examined, I deny your right or any man's right to brand him as a murderer."

"You remarked just now, sir," cried the squire, "that you preferred to leave the business of lawyers to the lawyers. Please do so, and remember that while I am head of this jurisdiction on Romney Marsh I'll brook no dictation from Admiralty men—no, sir, not from the First Lord downward."

"Come, come, gentlemen," said Doctor Syn, drumming with his fingers on the table, "I think that this is an ill-fitting time and place for wrangling. The captain has got a bee in his bonnet somehow, and the sooner we get it out for him the better. Let us please hear, sir, what he has to say."

The squire nodded his head roughly and sat silent, while the rest of the company waited for the captain to continue, which he presently did, still pulling vigorously at his long clay pipe.

"The next thing I don't like," he went on, "is Dymchurch itself. I don't like the Marsh behind it, and I don't like the flat, open coastline; it looks a deal too