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There was no coxcombry in his persuasion. That he was agreeable to Myrtle, she rendered evident. And in the quest for sympathy and affection which is natural to those who have been hurt as she had been, it was inevitable that her relations with her kinsman Mandeville should be strengthened in their intimacy. Add to this that he had now the assurance of Sir Andrew's entire favour and support. Sir Andrew had done more than hint it to him. There was an end to any thought of marriage between his child and the renegade Latimer, this ungrateful scoundrel to whom his house was closed, which the Captain assumed—and not without justification—to mean that the way to his own suit lay open. That suit he now cautiously pursued, and it was in the pursuit of it that he was riding to Fairgrove, bearing a choice item of news which the interview that morning with Dick Williams had supplied him.

He turned up King Street, where the traffic was less brisk, and pushed on at a better pace towards the Town Gate. On a sandy waste beyond the unfinished fortification works, undertaken some twenty years before, but subsequently abandoned, he saw a considerable party of militia at drill. It was composed largely of young men of the working-classes, the least responsible, and therefore the most inflammable material in the province. The sight of Mandeville's red coat provoked certain ribaldries, which they shouted after him, but more or less in a spirit of good-humour.