He roused up as a petty officer entered the stable, who prayed him, from Lieutenant Millington, to come back to the house and dine with the officers of the company. Hugh hesitated a moment, then came, rather sullen and defiant, and after washing the dust from his face entered the dining room. Millington, a heavy, slow man of near forty, greeted him courteously, and presented him to his brother officers, who were distant and suspicious. “You are of Woodstead, are you not, sir?” one asked him, with an implication that made Hugh guess the other held him to have come from a den of all iniquities. Then they conversed of matters that concerned them, while Hugh swallowed his dinner in silence, with an occasional pause to stare defiantly at Peregrine, who scowled at him from the opposite corner of the table. It was a relief when the meal was ended and he could rise, bent on setting out from the place at once; but Millington bade him step apart with him into an empty parlor. “’Tis an ill report we have had of you this winter, Hugh Gwyeth,” he began judicially, as he seated himself by the open window; “can you give me nothing better to bear to Everscombe?” Hugh stood erect, with a feeling that he was a culprit brought to sentence, and replied that he had only slain a man in a fair fight, and he held that no wrong. “Perhaps not;” Millington waived the question; “but I tell you, nephew, ’tis not the part of an honest gentleman to be herding with such drunken libertines and cowardly bullies as those that hold Woodstead.” “Mayhap ’tis not the company I would keep of my own will,” Hugh admitted, “though they have been kind to me. But ’tis best I lie close just now.” “If you have done no wrong why need you hide yourself?” Millington retorted, with a flicker of a triumphant smile. “Have me a murderer and a thief, if you will,” Hugh flung back. “Nay, ’tis that I held you a lad of good parts, in spite of your running after these strange gods. That you have dealt so courteously by little Mistress Campion shows you are not all lost yet. But take heed to the associates you keep.” Hugh felt a guilty hotness in his face, but, bracing himself, he listened with respect to all his uncle had to say farther in the same strain, and, when he had done, he replied honestly, “I thank you, sir; methinks you mean all kindly.” So he took his leave, and turned away to summon Garrett; then remembered, and with a downcast look hesitated back to Millington. “An’t like you, uncle,” he faltered, “I am ashamed to ask it, but I have had to borrow money to provide for Lois, and I promised this fellow of mine reward for aiding me. And I have no money.” “Eh? How do you live, then, sir?” “I had some. I lost it at dice,” Hugh admitted shamefacedly. “On my honor, I never will again.”