Halfway up the hill, however, he stopped abruptly and swinging round smacked his leg with an emphatic thwack, muttering:
"Hang me if I can make it out. What the Villikins and his Dinah does the landlady of a village inn want a making signs with a wooden-headed fisherman?"
Mr. Starling's wits would have been still farther sharpened could he have followed Willie Sanderson down the village and watched him unseen.
The lads, once clear of the "Blue Lion," turned swiftly to the left and ran down to the beach, where, in a confused heap, were the recently taken fish and the baskets in which they were to be packed.
Willie Sanderson, however, after a word or two with the old fisherman, turned to the right and walked slowly toward the end of the village.
As he neared the row of cottages he saw, coming toward him on the road that led by many a weary mile to London, a smart tax cart.
Willie's eyes were sharp and though the little white-covered cart apparently differed in nothing from its kindred, he knew it at a glance, and, drawing a little aside, he sat down on a heap of empty baskets to wait patiently.
Presently the cart came up, and the driver, a little, thickset man, dressed in an ordinary guernsey, and thick, white trousers peculiar to the seacoast, and wearing a patch over his left eye, shot a sharp glance from the right one at the recumbent figure of the fisherman, and gruffly gave him "Good-morning."
"Good-morning, Job, lad," replied Willie, and with a smile he repeated the action which had surprised Mr. Starling.
In an instant the old fellow's hand went up to his ears, and, with a reflection of Willie Sanderson's smile, he "tckd" to the horse and passed on.
Beyond the salutation not a word had passed, but Willie Sanderson rose to his feet and set off toward the beach, whistling with the satisfaction of a man who has adroitly accomplished a difficult and dangerous undertaking.
To the unsophisticated inhabitants of the little seacoast village the Mildmays of the Park, and the Dodsons of the Cedars, were very great folk, indeed, but we have now to do with far greater, with no less a personage and family, indeed, than the well-known Earl of Lackland and his children.
A very great man was the Earl of Lackland. His ancestors had fought at Cressy, and at Hastings.