“Why, what’s to startle you?” said the Colonel quietly, smiling to behold their fears. “It is but my good hostess.” She came in from the common room bearing a letter that had just been brought for Colonel Holles. He took it, wondering; then, observing the great seal, a little colour crept into his cheeks. He spread the sheet, and read, under the observing eyes of his friends and his hostess, and they were all alike uneasy. Twice he read that letter before he spoke. The unexpected had happened, and it had happened at the eleventh hour, barely in time to arrest him on the brink of what might well prove a precipice. Thus he saw it now, his vision altering with his fortunes. “Luck has stood your friend sooner than we could have hoped,” wrote Albemarle. “A military post in the Indies has, as I learn from letters just received, fallen vacant. It is an important command full worthy of your abilities, and there, overseas, you will be safe from all inquisitions. If you will wait upon me here at the Cockpit this afternoon, you shall be further informed.” He begged his friends to excuse him a moment, took pen, ink, and paper from the sideboard and quickly wrote a few lines in answer. When Mrs. Quinn had departed to convey that note to the messenger, and the door had closed again, the two uneasy conspirators started up. Questions broke simultaneously from both of them. For answer Holles placed Albemarle’s letter on the table. Tucker snatched it up, and conned it, whilst over his shoulder Rathbone read it, too. At last Tucker lowered the sheet, and his grave eyes fell again upon Holles. “And you have answered--what?” he demanded. “That I will wait upon his grace this afternoon as he requires of me.” “But to what end?” asked Rathbone. “You can’t mean that you will accept employment from a government that is doomed.” The Colonel shrugged. “As I have told Tucker from the first, I serve governments; I do not make them.” “But just now....” Tucker was beginning. “I wavered. It is true. But something else has been flung into the scales.” And he held up Albemarle’s letter. They argued with him after that; but they argued vainly. “If I am of value to your government when you shall have established it, you will know where to find me; and you will know from what has happened now that I am trustworthy.” “But your value to us is now, in the struggle that is coming. And it is for this that we are prepared to reward you richly.” He was not, however, to be moved. The letter from Albemarle had reached him an hour too soon. At parting he assured them that their secret was safe with him, and that he would forget all that they had said. Since, still, they had disclosed no vital facts whose betrayal could frustrate their purpose, it was an almost unnecessary assurance. They stalked out resentfully. But Tucker returned alone a moment later.