Hold’s mind was instantly made up. ‘I must heave anchor in a hurry,’ he said, as he thrust back the letter into his pocket. ‘So good-bye, Grincher; and good-bye, Barks!’ and without further delay, he withdrew to prepare for the journey to Carbery. To pay his reckoning, to push some needful articles into a bag, and to consign his sea-chest to the custody of the authorities of Plugger’s, well used to similar trusts, took but half an hour; and when the mid-day train started for the west of England it carried with it a second-class passenger, whose only luggage was a black bag, and who could easily have been mistaken for a man-o’-war’s man bound for Plymouth, there to rejoin one of those _Hornets_ or _Monkeys_ which have superseded the _Arethusas_ and _Hermiones_ of the past. Arrived at the station most convenient for his purpose, Hold trudged sturdily on until he reached his old quarters at _The Traveller’s Rest_, where he installed his bag in one of those single-bedded rooms which were always at the service of so solvent a customer as Mr Hold, who, while inland and among shore-going folks, dropped his titular distinction of captain. After supper, the fresh arrival at _The Rest_ sallied forth, and making his way to Carbery, waited, pacing softly to and fro, under the shelter of the park wall. CHAPTER XVIII.—UNDER THE PARK WALL. All through that August day which witnessed the hurried journey of Mr Richard Hold, master mariner, from the river-side bowers of Plugger’s to the silvan shades of _The Traveller’s Rest_, Sir Sykes Denzil’s ward was in a state of feverish agitation, which it was hard for even her to conceal from those about her. We may fairly own that women surpass us in the social diplomacy which they study from the cradle almost, and that their powers of suppressing what they feel—not seldom from a noble motive—are greater than ours. All of us must have wondered, as we read the marvellous narratives of such prisoners as Trenck and Latude, at the patient ingenuity that could contrive rope-ladders out of the flax thread of shirts, files out of scraps of rusty iron, tools from any fragment of metal that came to hand. None the less should we be astonished at the power of dissembling evinced by the captives on the watch for the propitious moment to break prison. What Ruth dreaded above all other things was what a woman always does dread, the scrutiny of her own sex. That men are credulous, careless, prone to give credit to the shallowest excuse, readily hoodwinked, and easy to pacify, has been an article of faith with Eve’s daughters since prehistoric times. The real spy to be feared, the real censor before whom to tremble, is decidedly feminine, in the estimation of women who have anything to hide. Ruth therefore devoted her whole attention to keeping up a brave outside before the eyes of her guardian’s daughters, Blanche and Lucy, two as honestly unsuspicious girls as could be met with in all Devonshire.