How still the house seemed, the servants having gone to bed long since, leaving the two friends to drowse or yarn as so inclined.

`Tomorrow we'll go to the harbour, Martyn, although Mr Tremayne tells me there's little anchored in the Roads at present worth looking at.'

The male half of the Tremayne family was the household steward and general handyman. Like the other retainers he was old. Although the Seven Years War had ended ten years back, it had left a lot of unfilled gaps in the villages and hamlets. Some young men had fallen in battle, others had liked the outside world better than their own rural communities and had stayed away. In Falmouth you were usually a sailor or a farm worker, and that was how, it had always been.

`Maybe it will be clear enough for us to ride, eh?' Bolitho smiled. `Ride?'

`We don't go everywhere in London by coach, you know!'

Their laughter stopped in mid-air as two loud bangs echoed from the front doorway.

`Who is abroad at this hour?' Dancer was already on his feet.

Bolitho held up his hand. `Wait.' He strode to a cupboard and took out a pistol. `It is well to be careful, even here.'

Together they opened the big double doors, feeling the cold wind wrap around their overheated bodies like a shroud.

Bolitho saw it was his father's gamekeeper, John Pendrith, who had a cottage close to the house. He was a powerfully built, morose sort of man, who was much feared by the local poachers. And there were quite a few of them.

`Oi be sorry to disturb you, zur.' He gestured vaguely with his long-barrelled musket. `But one o' the lads come up from the town. Old Reverend Walmsley said it were the best thing to do.'

`Come in, John.'

Bolitho closed the doors after them. The big gamekeeper's presence, let alone his air of mystery, had made him uneasy in some way.

Pendrith took a glass of brandy and warmed himself by the fire, the steam rising from his thick coat like a cart-horse.