Folly's Reward Read Free Page A

claims to be English, yet he comes from France, where that evil Napoleon was defeated just last year. Let us give the fellow a shilling and send him on his way.”
    “Yet his speech is very elegant.” Mr. MacEwen knocked the pipe against the edge of the grate.
    “Fancy words are all very well, but any jackanapes can learn to ape his betters. Look at his appearance! No gentleman ever wore such clothing. It is that of any rough sailor.”
    “It is most distressing, indeed.”
    “And he says he does not know who he is. How can anyone not know their own name?”
    “No one but a scoundrel, Mrs. MacEwen, no doubt at all.”
    “If the fellow ever had anything finer in his background, he has come down in the world.”
    “An excellent supposition, Mrs. MacEwen. Fled creditors, most like, or the law.”
    “Oh, good gracious! You do not think he is a criminal?” Mrs. MacEwen turned to Prudence. “How could you bring him here, Miss Drake? When you and Bobby are hiding at the risk of your very lives. That is enough, surely, without threatening all of us with a vagabond found on the beach.”
    “I had no wish to find him, Mrs. MacEwen,” Prudence said, coloring a little. “I am very sensible of your kindness in sheltering Bobby and me. Yet I believe this man has had a gentleman’s education.”
    “Has he, by God?” Mr. MacEwen began to fill his pipe with fresh tobacco. “How do you know?”
    “He talked about things.” Even to Prudence’s own ears, it sounded lame.
    “Then he is a gentleman who has disgraced himself and makes his own way. You mark my words! There is no more dangerous type. Forgotten his name, indeed! I never heard such fustian. Remembers it all too well and is afraid we’ll have heard ill of it, I’ll be bound. Let him have his meal and be gone from here!”
    “Yet he’s a likely-looking lad,” Mr. MacEwen said. “I have given him one of my shirts. You’ll have no objection to my giving the lad an old shirt, Mrs. MacEwen?”
    Prudence caught his merry eye and smiled back. Mr. MacEwen often teased his wife.
    Mrs. MacEwen frowned. “That is no more than Christian charity.”
    “Nor a bed in the stable for tonight? He isn’t strong enough yet, I’ll warrant, to be taking to the road. Besides, what if he was a peer’s son or an honorable man with a family, and we turned him out of doors on a cold night?”
    “If you lock the house up tight, there’d be no danger in letting him lodge in the stable, I suppose.”
    “And tomorrow he can do a little work for his supper. Maybe by then he’ll have recalled his name. If it’s a good one, there might be a reward in it.”
    “Very well, sir,” Mrs. MacEwen said, “but on your own head be it, if we’re all found murdered in our beds.”
    “What do you say, Miss Drake? You are very quiet. What shall we do about this flotsam or jetsam? Shall we shelter this foundling of yours from the sea?”
    Prudence smiled again at his kindly face, wreathed now in tobacco smoke.
    “As my father always said of you, Mr. MacEwen, he never had a friend less likely to follow anyone else’s counsel. You were kind enough to give shelter to Bobby and me, when I turned up like a beggar at the door. So I believe you have made up your mind to keep him, whatever I might say.”
    “And so he has, Prudence,” Mrs. MacEwen said, wagging her finger. “So he has. But what time have we for strangers when we have your problem on our hands? What about that, Mr. MacEwen? What if that black lord comes here after wee Bobby?”
    “Oh, that can’t happen,” Prudence said with a great deal more conviction than she felt. “How could Lord Belham possibly find us here?”
     
Chapter 2
     
    “Devil take it, Roberts! What a damnable, bloody, God-forsaken country! How much longer, for pity’s sake?”
    The carriage moved like a March hare along the rutted track, now stopping, now leaping ahead with a jolt. The man inside leaned back against the squabs and continued to curse with