Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/249

 "Bab," says he at the conclusion, "these play-*house tricks of ours will do well to have an ending. This Captain man is too devilish ingenious to be tolerated any more. He's too early on the perch for us, Bab, and that's a fact. He must either have his wings clipped, else I must fly away."

"The time is not yet for you to fly, my lad," says I; "you know very well that I have decided to hold you here until I can have you carried privily to London, and then shipped straightway from Deptford to the Continent. But as to the clipping of the Captain's wings, how shall you set about it?"

"There is a way, you can depend upon it," he replied with a significance that startled me; "though to be sure 'tis not one that's very gentle."

"What do you mean, sir?" says I, while a light came in his eyes and made them shine like meteors.

"Well, I mean just this," says he, "for me to fly from this house to-day is certain death, as you remind me. But it is equally impossible for me to be here abiding now that the Captain's so alert. 'Twill not be advisable for this house to hold us both another day. Therefore one of us must go; and if the name of that one does not happen to be Dare, then I think it's Grantley."

"A very pregnant and luminous piece of reasoning," says I, "but provided it is Grantley, how are you going to set the man in motion?"