"Won’t do me any harm? Only make me black and blue, eh? Ha! ha! I’m glad ’tis no worse. But ’tis a thousand pities those ruffians escaped the shower. Well, well, the rain falls on the just and the unjust, we’re told, and——bless me, Squire, it takes me back forty years, when we had rigged up a trap for a freshman, and it toppled on the reverend head of the dean himself. Ha! ha!" "Ha! ha!" laughed the Squire, his vexation giving way to his sense of humour. "Ho! ho!" roared Sam. "Drown me if it bean’t the——" "Shut up!" growled Dick. "Why must you laugh at the Vicar in that idiotic way?" "’Cos he laughs at hisself," said Sam, highly aggrieved. "I wouldn’ laugh at him with his nightgown on in church, not I; but when he be just like a simple common man, daze me if I can keep it in." The two elders were now climbing the path. Dick stayed to retie the thread, though he did not expect that the marauders, after the alarm they had had, would make a second attempt that night. Having closed the door, he accompanied Sam up the cliff, greatly relieved when he heard, far above, the Vicar’s hearty laugh, as he related to the Squire sundry other pranks and escapades of his younger days. CHAPTER THE TWELFTH Penwarden Disappears As Dick hoped, the scare given to the enemy by his prompt sally from the Towers proved effectual; no further attempt was made to interfere with the boat. Rumours of the contrivance for giving an alarm spread among the villagers, and Mr. Carlyon, without revealing his own misadventure, took care to explain to Petherick, sexton, beadle, and constable, that the intruders would have suffered material damage if they had had the courage to enter the shed. Petherick duly reported this, as the parson intended, adding on his own account that the young monkeys had invented an instrument of torture for all who dared to molest them. The parson’s housekeeper discussed with Petherick a strange stain upon her master’s stock, and Petherick himself, despatched one day to the Truro perruquier with a parcel carefully tied, was amazed when the tradesman, opening it in his presence, revealed a wig, not iron grey, but mottled blue in colour. These matters were a topic of conversation in Polkerran for many a day, and there were some who offered explanations, and some who shook their heads and looked profoundly wise, but discreetly held their tongues. The truth was never known outside the Towers, Dick threatening Sam with excommunication if he breathed a word of it.