"I'm glad that you agree with me."
Captain Tremayne stared at his chief, the utmost dismay upon his
fine young face. "But surely, sir, surely - I mean, sir, if this
report is correct some explanation -" He broke down, utterly at
fault.
"To be sure, there's an explanation. You may always depend upon a
most elegant explanation for anything that Dick Butler does. His
life is made up of mistakes and explanations." He spoke bitterly,
"He broke into the nunnery under a misapprehension, according to the
account of the sergeant who accompanied him," and Sir Terence read
out that part of the report. "But how is that to help him, and at
such a time as this, with public feeling as it is, and Wellington
in his present temper about it? The provost's men are beating the
country for the blackguard. When they find him it's a firing party
he'll have to face."
Tremayne turned slowly to the window and looked down the fair
prospect of the hillside over a forest of cork oaks alive with fresh
green shoots to the silver sheen of the river a mile away. The
storms of the preceding week had spent their fury - the travail that
had attended the birth of Spring - and the day was as fair as a day
of June in England.
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