"When he _what_?" almost roared the dock master, fairly jumping. "Good lord, Marshall, have you gone off your head? Do you mean to claim that you saw my boy here--last night?"
"Certainly, sir. Just after that awful clap of thunder it was--say about eight or ten minutes after; and what with that and the darkness and the way the wind was howling, I never see nor heard nothing of him coming till I got to the door, and there he was--in them light-coloured knickers and the pulled-down wideawake hat I'd seen him wear dozens of times--with his coat collar turned up and a drippin' umbrella over his head, making like he was going up the steps to try and get in. 'Who's there?' as I sings to him, though I needn't, for the little light was streaking out through the windows showed me what he was wearing and who it was well enough. 'It's me--Master Reggie, Marshall,' he says. 'I've come to get my school books. I left 'em behind in the hurry, and father says he's sure you'll let me go in and get 'em.' 'Oh, does he?' says I. 'Well, I'm surprised at him and at you, too, Master Reggie, a-thinking I'd go against orders. Word is that nobody gets in; and nobody _does_, even the king hisself, till them orders is changed. So you just come away from that door, and trot right away back to your pa,' I says to him, 'and ask him from me what kind of a sentry he thinks Bill Marshall is.' Which sets him a-snivelling and a-pleading till I has to take him by the shoulder, and fair drag him away before I could get him to go as he'd been told."
"Well done, Sophie!" exclaimed Cleek. "Gad! what a creature of resource the woman is, and what an actress she would make, the vixen! No need to ask you if your son really did come over here last night, Mr. Beachman; your surprise and indignation have answered for you."
"I should think it would, by George!" rapped out the dock master. "What sort of an insane man must you have thought me, Marshall, to credit such a thing as that? As if I'd have been likely to let a delicate fifteen-year-old boy go out on an errand of any kind in a beast of a storm like last night's, much less tell him that he was to ask a sentry, _in my name_, to disobey his orders. Good God! gentlemen, it's simply monstrous! Why, look here, Sir Charles; look here, Mr. Cleek! Even if I'd been guilty of such a thing, and the boy was willing to go out, he couldn't have done it to save his life. The poor little chap met with an accident last night and he's been in bed ever since. He was going down the stairs on his way to dinner when that terrific clap of thunder came, and the blessed thing startled him so much that, in the pitch darkness, he missed his footing, fell clear to the bottom of the staircase, and broke his collar bone."