Page:Moonfleet - John Meade Falkner.pdf/176

 It was daylight when I awoke, and the wind had fallen, though I could still hear the thunder of the swell against the rock-face down below. The fire was yet burning, and by it sat Elzevir, cooking something in the pot. He looked fresh and keen, like a man risen from a long night's sleep, rather than one who had spent the hours of darkness in struggling against a gale, and must afterwards remain watching because, forsooth, the sentinel sleeps.

He spoke as soon as he saw that I was awake, laughing and saying, "How goes the night, Watchman? This is the second time that I have caught thee napping, and didst sleep so sound it might have taken a cold pistol's lips against thy forehead to awake thee."

I was too full of my story even to beg his pardon, but began at once to tell him what had happened, and how, by following the hint that Ratsey dropped, I had made out, as I thought, a secret meaning in these verses. Elzevir heard me patiently, and with more show of interest towards the end, and then took the parchment in his hands, reading it carefully, and checking the errors of numbering by the help of the red prayer-book.

"I believe thou art right," he said at length; "for why should the figures all be false if there is no hidden trickery in it? If't had been one or two were wrong, I would have said some priest had copied them in error; for priests are thriftless folk, and had as lief set a thing down wrong as right; but with all wrong there is no room for chance. So if he means it, let us see what 'tis he means. First he says 'tis in a well. But what well? and the depth he gives of fourscore feet is overdeep for any well near Moonfleet."