My lord assented; but with such a sigh that it required no wizard to discern both the cloud that hung over him, and also that now he had done what Ferguson had dared him to do, the consequences lay heavy on him. The King, after considering him a moment with a singular expression, between amusement and reproach, broke the silence.

"See here, my lord," he said with good nature. "I will tell you what to do. Sit down now, and here, and write a line to Monsieur, bidding him begone; and send it by a private hand, and the warrant by a messenger an hour later."

The Duke stared at the King in astonishment. "But he will escape, sir," he faltered.

"So much the better," the King answered indifferently. "If we take him what are we to do with him? Besides, to tell you the truth, my lord, he did me a great service eight years ago."

"He, sir?"

"Yes," said the King smiling. "He induced his father to fly the country, when, if he had stayed-but you know that story. So do you warn him, and the sooner he is beyond La Manche the better."

The Duke looked unhappy. "I dare not do it, sir," he said at last, after a pause.

"Dare not do it? When I authorise it? Why not?"

"No, sir. Because if I were impeached by the Commons-"

The King shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, these safeguards!" he muttered. "These town councils, and provincial councils, and States-General! And now these Commons and Lords! Shall I ever be quit of them? Well, there is but one way then. I must do it. If they impeach me, I go back to Loo; and they may stew in their own juice!"

He rose with that, and moving stiffly to the table at which Lord Portland had been writing when we entered, he sought for and found a pen. Then sitting in the chair which the Groom of the Stole had left vacant, he tore a slip of paper from a folio before him and, writing some lines on it-about six, as far as I could judge-handed the paper to the Duke, who had remained standing at a formal distance.

"Voilà, Monsieur," he said. "Will that suit your lordship?"

The Duke took it respectfully and looked at it. "But, sir, it is in my name!" he cried, aghast. "And bears my signature."

"Eh, bien, why not?" his Majesty answered lightly. "The name is the name of Jacob, but the hand is the hand of Esau. Take it and send it by a trusty messenger. Perhaps the man who came with you, and who-pheugh, my lord! I had forgotten that this person was here! We have spoken too freely."

The oath which the Duke let fall as he turned, and the face of dismay and anger with which he gazed on me, were proof enough that he shared the King's opinion, as he had shared his mistake. For a moment, the two glaring at me with equal disgust and vexation, I thought I should sink into the floor. Then the King beckoned me to come forward, and I obeyed him.

CHAPTER XXV

The odd and unexpected glimpse of generosity which the King had allowed to escape him, in his interview with the Duke, somewhat lessened the fears I must otherwise have entertained at that moment. To which must be added that I am one of those who, when violence and physical danger are not in question, retain a fair mastery of their minds. Nevertheless, I am free to confess that as I went forward, I wished myself anywhere else in the world, and would have sacrificed half my remaining economies to be seated, pen in hand, and obscurely safe, in Mr. Brome's room.

But the thing took a turn which relieved me when I least expected it. As I approached, the chagrin in the King's face gave place to a look of surprise; and that again, but more slowly, to one of intelligence. "Ah! Je me trompais!" he muttered rapidly. "What did you say his name was?"

"Price," the Duke answered, continuing to glower at me.

"Price? Ah, cela va sans dire! But-he is a cadet-a dependent? He is in some way connected-how do you say it-related to your family!"

"To mine, sir!" the Duke exclaimed in a voice of the utmost astonishment; and he drew himself up as if the King had pricked him.

"N'est-ce pas ça?" his Majesty replied, looking from one to the other of us. "Yet he has so much a look of you that it might be possible in some lights to take him for your grace, were he differently dressed!"

The Duke looked purely offended. "Your Majesty is under a strange misapprehension," he said, very stiffly. "If this person resembles me-of which I was not aware-I know nothing of the cause; and the likeness for what it is worth, must be accidental. As a fact, I never saw him but once before in my life, sir, and that perfectly by chance." And he very briefly related the circumstances under which we came together.

The King listened to the story, but as if he scarcely believed it; and he smiled when the Duke came to tell how he allowed me to escape. Then, "And you have never seen him from that day to this?" he said incredulously.

"Never!" said the Duke, positively. "But it is not my intention to lose sight of him again."

"Ah?" the King said.

"I have not told you, sir, all that happened," the Duke continued, reading, I think, the King's thoughts, "But briefly. Mr. Ferguson, who has come to be little short of a madman, drew a pistol on me at the close of our interview; and but for his friend here-who had been placed to listen, but at that broke from his place of hiding and knocked up the muzzle, so that it exploded harmlessly-I should have come off ill."

"And I not much better," the King said, nodding and looking grave. "You are unhurt."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that puts another face on it; and if you are retaining him beside you, what he has now heard will be of the less importance. Hark you, my friend," he continued, addressing me, "can you keep your mouth shut?"

I said humbly that I could and would.

"Then, Taisez! Taisez!" he answered emphatically. "And take this letter to Hogsden Gardens to Bishop Lloyd's. See Bishop Lloyd and put it in his hands. Say nothing, give no message, but go to your master's in St. James's Square. Will you seal it, Duke, with a plain seal? Good. And go you out, man, by the way you came in, and answer no questions. And now for the council and the warrants, my lord. We have lost too much time already!"

To say that I went from the presence without knowing how I did it, and when I reached the courtyard had no more idea how I had gained it, or by what staircase I had descended, than if I had been blind, is but the truth; nor is it to be wondered at when the amazing thing which had happened to me is in the least degree taken into consideration. In truth I walked on air and saw nothing, I was so deeply overjoyed; and though it is certain that as I went out I met one and another, passed the sentries, and ran the gauntlet of curious eyes-for who that quits a court escapes that ordeal? – I was no more conscious of the observations made upon me, or the surprise I excited as I went by, than if I had really walked in the clouds. Issuing from the gates I took by instinct rather than design the road to London, and hugging to my breast the letter which the King-the King! – had entrusted to me, made the best of my way towards Tyburn.

I had been wiser had I gone by the other road through the village and taken the first coach I found; there are commonly one or two at Kensington waiting to carry passengers to London. But in the fluster of my spirits, I did not measure the distance I had to go, or the time I should consume in walking. My main anxiety for the moment was to be alone; alone, and at leisure to probe my fortune and success, and appreciate both the relief and the good luck I had compassed. I could have sung as I walked; I could have skipped and danced; and a gleam of sunshine breaking the March sky, and gilding the leafless arms of the trees and the flat green pastures that border the road north of Hyde Park, I was moved to raise my hat and look upwards and reverently thank Providence for this wonderful instance of its goodness, which I had not had the heart to do for some time.

When I descended a little to earth-a step which was hastened by a flash of recollection that showed me Ferguson's niece waiting at Clerkenwell Gate, a little figure, forlorn and desolate, yet with eyes of wrath and a face puckered with determination-when I came I say a little to myself and to think of Hogsden Gardens, and remembered that it lay on the farther side of town by Bunhill Fields, I was already at Tyburn turning; and it seemed to be no longer worth while to ride. The day was on the wane, and the road thence to St. Giles's Pound was lively with persons come out to take the air, through whom I threaded my way at a good pace, and coming to Holborn without mishap, turned up Cow Lane, and so got speedily to Smithfield, and across the market to Long Lane, knowing my way so far without having need to ask.

Here, however, I took sudden fright. My mind, which as I walked had been busy with the girl and the steps I should take to find her-if indeed I wished to find her, about which I was puzzled, the surrounding circumstances being so different-was invaded by the notion that I had been long on the road. To this was added next moment the reflection that messengers sent to arrest the Duke could by taking a coach forestall me. The thought threw me into a hot fit, which increased on me when I considered that I did not know the remainder of the road, and might waste much time in tracing it. Naturally my first impulse in this strait was to seek a guide; but Long Lane by Smithfield is only one degree better than Whetstone Park, and I shrank from applying to the sots and drabs who stood at the doors and corners, or lounged out of the patched windows, and, lazily or rudely, watched me go by.

In this difficulty, and growing the more diffident and alarmed the more slowly I walked, I looked about eagerly for some person, of passable aspect, of whom I could enquire. I saw none, and my uncertain glances and loitering steps were beginning to draw on me advances and an attention that were anything but welcome, when, reaching a corner where an alley, now removed-I think it was then called Dog Alley-runs out of Long Lane, I saw a man, decently habited, come out of a house a little way down the alley. He closed the door sharply behind him, and, as I looked, went off in the opposite direction.

Here was my opportunity. Without losing a moment I ran after him, and he, hearing my steps, turned; and we came face to face. Then, when it was too late to retreat, I saw with unutterable dismay that the man I had stopped was no stranger, but the person who had dressed me up the night before and taken me to the mysterious house in the suburbs; the man called Smith whom I had first seen under the Piazza in Covent Garden, and again in Ferguson's room.

To come face to face with anyone of the gang with the knowledge that I had but now left the palace after informing against them was of itself enough to make my knees tremble under me. But of this man, though his civil treatment had been in pleasant contrast to Ferguson's brutality, I had conceived an instinctive dread, based as much on his silence and reserve and a sort of strict power with which I credited him, as on his contemptuous treatment of my tyrant. In a word, had I come on Ferguson himself I could scarcely have been more overcome.

On hearing my footsteps he had turned on me very sharply, with the air of a man who had no mind to be followed, and no taste for followers. But on seeing who it was his face grew light and he whistled his surprise. "I was on my way to you," he said, "and here you are. That is good luck. I suppose Ferguson sent you?"

"No," I stammered, avoiding his eyes, and wondering, with inward quakings, what was going to happen to me. "I-I lost my road."

"Oh!" said he, and looked keenly at me. "Lost your road, did you? Well, it was very much to the purpose, as it happened. May I ask where you were going?"

I shifted my feet uneasily. "To Bunhill Fields," I said, naming the first place of which I could think.

"Ah!" he answered, with apparent carelessness, and though it seemed scarcely possible he should fail to observe the heat and disorder into which his presence had thrown me, he made no sign. "Well, you are not far out," he continued, "and I will come with you. When you have done your errand we will talk over my business. This way. I know this end of the town well. And so it was not Ferguson," he added with a sharp look at me, "who sent you after me?"

"No," I said.

"Nor his errand that brought you here?"

"No," I said again, my mouth dry. "And I need not give you the trouble to come with me. I shall be taking you-"

"Out of my way? Not at all," he answered briskly. "And it is no trouble. Come along, my friend."

I dared say no more, nor show farther reluctance; and so, with feet like lead and eyes roving furtively for a way of escape, I turned and went with him. Nay, it was not my feet only that were weighted; the letter, and my consciousness of it, lay so heavy on my mind that it was like lead in the pocket.

I was indeed in a strait now! And in one so difficult I could discern no way out of it; for though I could in part, and in part only, command my countenance, I failed absolutely to command my thoughts, which did nothing but revolve tumultuously about the words, "What am I to do? What am I to do?" words that seemed written in red letters on my brain. Only one thing was clear to me in the confusion, and that was the urgent necessity I lay under of hiding my errand, the disclosure of which must carry with it the disclosure of the place whence I came and the company I had been keeping. With time to think and coolness to distinguish I should doubtless have seen the possibility of announcing my errand to the Duke, yet laying it on Ferguson's shoulders; but pushed for time and unable at a pinch to weigh all the issues, I could form no determination, much less one leading to so daring a step. After one denial, that is.

In the meantime we moved on; and at first my companion seemed to be unconscious of my sluggish pace and my perturbation. But presently I felt rather than saw that from minute to minute he glanced at me askance, and that after each of these inspections he laughed silently. The knowledge that I lay under this observation immeasurably increased my embarrassment. I could no longer put a fair face on the matter, but every time he looked at me looked away guiltily, unable to support his eyes. This presently grew so insupportable that to escape from my embarrassment I coughed and affected to choke.

"You have a cold, I am afraid," he said, scarcely concealing the sneer in his tone. "And yet you look warm. You must have walked fast, my friend?"

I muttered that I had.

"To overtake me, perhaps! It was good of you," he said in the same tone of secret badinage. "But we are here. What part of the Fields do you want? Whitecross Street?"

"No," I muttered.

"Then it must be Baxter's Rents."

"No."

"Bunhill Row?"

"No."

"No? Well, there is not much else here," he said; and he shrugged his shoulders, "except the Fields and the burial-ground. Your business does not lie with the latter, I suppose?"

"No," I said faintly. And we stood.

At another time I must have shuddered at the dreary expanse on this uttermost fringe of the town that stretched before us under a waning light; an expanse of waste land broken only by the wall of the burial-ground, or the chimney of a brick-kiln, and bordered, where its limits were visible, by half-built houses, and squatter huts, and vast piles of refuse. Ugly as the prospect was, however, and far from reassuring to the timorous, I asked nothing better than to look at it. and look at it, and continue to look at it. But Mr. Smith, who did not understand this mood, turned with an impatient laugh.

"I suppose that you did not come here to look at that," said he.

Like a fool I jumped at the absurd, the flimsy pretext.

"Yes," I said. "I-I merely came to take the air."

The moment the words were spoken I trembled at my audacity. But he took it better than I expected, for he merely paused to stare at me, and then chuckled grimly.

"Well," he said, "then, now that you have taken the air let us go back. Have you anything to object to that, Mr. Taylor?"

I could find nothing.

"I will come with you," he continued. "I want to see Ferguson, and we can settle my business there."

But this only presented to me a dreadful vision of Ferguson, released from his bonds, and mad with rage and the desire to avenge himself; and I stopped short.

"I am not going there," I said.

"No? Then where, may I ask, are you going?" he answered, watching me with a placid amusement, which made it as clear as the daylight, that he saw through my evasions. "Where is it my lord's pleasure to go?"

"To Brome's, in Fleet Street," I said hoarsely. And if he had had his back to me at that instant, and I a knife in my hand, I could have run him through! For as I said it, and he with mocking suavity assented, and we stepped out together to return the way we had come through Long Lane-over which the sky hung low in a dull yellow haze, the last of the western light-I had a swift and stinging recollection of the King and my lord, and the letter, and the passage of time; and could have sprung from his side, and poured out curses on him in the impotence of my rage and impatience. For the hour of grace which the King had granted was gone, and a second was passing, and still the letter that should warn the Duke of Berwick lay in my pocket, and I saw no chance of delivering it.

That Smith discerned the chagrin which this enforced companionship caused me-though not the ground of it-was as plain as that the fact gave him pleasure of no common kind. I had no longer such a command of my features that I could trust myself to look at him; but I was conscious, using some other sense, that he frequently looked at me, and always after these inspections, smiled like a man who finds something to his taste. And I hated him.

How long with these feelings I could have borne to go with him, or what I should have done in the last resort had he continued the same tactics, remains unproved; for at the same corner half-way down Long Lane, where I had first espied him, he paused. "I want to go in here," he said coolly. "I need only detain you a moment, Mr. Taylor."

"I will wait for you," I muttered, tingling all over with sudden hope. While he was inside I could run for it.

"Very well," he said. "This way."

I fancied that he suspected nothing, and that perhaps I had been wrong throughout; and overjoyed I went with him to the door of the house from which I had seen him emerge; my intention being to begone hotfoot the instant his back was turned. The house was three-storied high, narrow and commonplace, one of a row not long built, and but partially inhabited. Apparently he was at home there, for taking a key from his pocket, he opened the door; and stood aside for me to enter.

"I will wait," I muttered.

"Very well. Yon can wait inside," he answered.

If I had been wise I should have turned there and then, in the open street, and taking to my heels have run for my life and stayed for nothing. But, partly fool and partly craven, clinging to a hope which was scarcely a belief, that when he went upstairs or into another room, I might stealthily unlatch the door and begone, I let myself be persuaded; and I entered. The moment I had done so, he whipped out the key and thrusting the door to with his shoulder, locked it on the inside.

Then the man threw off all disguise. He turned with a laugh of triumph to where I stood trembling in the half-dark passage. "Now," he said, "we will have that letter, if you please, Mr. Taylor. I have a fancy to see what is in it."

"The letter!" I faltered.

"Yes, the letter!"

"I have no letter," I said.

"Tut-tut, letter or no letter, out with it! Do you think I could not see you touching your breast every half minute, to make sure that you had it safe-and not know what was in the wind! You are a poor plotter, Mr. Taylor, and I doubt if you will ever be of any use to me. But come, out with it! Unless you want me to be rough with you. Out with whatever it is you have there, and no tricks!"

He had a way with him when he spoke in that tone, not loudly but between his teeth, his eyes at the same time growing towards one another, that was worse than Ferguson's pistol; and I was alone with him in an empty house. Some, who would have done what I did, may blame me; but in the main the world is sensible, and I shall forfeit no prudent man's esteem when I confess that, after one attempt at evasion which he met by wrenching my coat open, and thrusting me against the wail so violently that my head spun again, I gave up the letter.

"I warn you! I warn you!" I cried, in a paroxysm of rage and grief. "It is for the Duke of Berwick, and if you open it-"

"For the Duke of Berwick?" he answered, pausing and gazing at me with his finger on the seal. "Why, you fool, why did you not tell me that before? From whom? From that scum, Ferguson?"

"From the Duke of Shrewsbury," I cried, rendered reckless by my rage.

"What?" he cried, in a voice of extraordinary surprise.

"From the Duke of Shrewsbury," I repeated; thinking that he had not understood me.

"My God!" he said, with a deep breath. "And have I caught the fox at last!"

"You are more likely to be caught yourself!" I answered, furiously.

Nevertheless, his words were a puzzle to me; but his tone of slow growing, almost incredulous triumph told something. Taking very little heed of me, and merely signing to me to follow him, he sprang up the stairs, and opening a door led the way into a back-room bare and miserable, but lighted by the last yellow glow of the western sky. It was possible to read here, and without a moment's hesitation he broke the seal of the letter, and tearing the packet open, read the contents.

That the perusal gave him immense satisfaction his face, which in the level light, cast by the window, seemed to gleam with unholy joy, was witness, no less than his movements. Flourishing the letter in uncontrollable excitement he twice strode the floor, muttering unformed sentences. Then he looked at the paper again and his jaw fell. "But it is not his hand!" he cried, staring at it in very plain dismay. And then recovering himself afresh, "No matter," he said. "It is his name, and the veriest fool would have used another hand. Is it yours? Did you write it, blockhead?"

"No," I said.

"No! But now I think of it-thousand devils, how came you by it? By this-eh?" he rapped out. "This letter? What d-d hocus pocus is here? What have you to do with the Duke of Shrewsbury, that he makes you his messenger?"

He bent his brows on me, and I knew that I had never been in greater danger in my life. Yet something of evil came to me in this extremity. Comprehending that if I said I came from Kensington I might expect the worst, I lied to him; yet used the truth where it suited me. "The Duke came to Ferguson's," I said.

"To Ferguson's?" he answered, staring at me.

"Yes, and bade him get that to the Duke, for his lodging was known and warrants would be out."

Smith clapped his hands together softly. "What!" he cried. "Is he in it as deep as that? Oh, the cunning! Oh, the cunning of him! And I to be going to all this trouble, and close on despair at that! And-Ferguson gave you the letter?"

"They both did."

"That old fox, too! And I was beginning to think him a bygone! Yet he beats us all! he beats us all! Or he would have beaten us if he had not trusted this silly. But I am forgetting. The Duke must be warned-if he has not started. When was this given to you, Mr. Trusty Taylor?"

"Two hours ago," I said, sullenly.

I was pleased to see that that alarmed him. "You fool!" he said, "why did you not tell me at once what you had got, and whither you were going? If the Duke is taken it will lie at your door. And if he is saved, it will be to my credit."

"I will come with you," I said, plucking up a spirit as I saw him about to leave.

"No, you will not," he answered, drily. "I am much obliged to you, but I prefer to gain the credit and tell the tale my own way. You will stay here, Mr. Taylor, and when the Duke is away I'll come and release you. In the meantime I would advise you to keep quiet. Hoity-toity, what is this?" he continued, as in my despair I tried to push by him, "Go back, you fool, or it will be the worse for you. You are not going out."

And, resisting all my appeals and remonstrances, he thrust me forcibly from the door; and whipping outside it, locked it on me. In vain I hammered on it with my fist and called after him, and threatened him. He clattered unheeding down the stair, and I heard the house-door slammed and locked. I listened a moment, but all remained quiet; and then, wild with rage, I turned to the window, thinking that by that way I might still escape. Alas, it looked only into a walled yard, and was strongly barred to boot.

God knows I thought myself then the most unlucky of men; a man ruined when on the point of a great and seemingly assured success. I flung myself down in my despair, and could have dashed my head against the boards. But presently, in the midst of my bewailing myself, and when the first convulsive fit of rage was abating, a new thought brought me to my feet in a panic. What if Smith, before he returned, fell in with Ferguson? The meeting was the more probable, inasmuch as, if Ferguson succeeded in freeing himself, he was as likely to hasten to the Duke of Berwick to warn him as to do anything else. At any rate I was not inclined to sit weighing the chances nicely, but hastening frantically to the door, I tried it with knee and shoulder. To my joy it yielded somewhat; on which, throwing caution aside, I drew back and flung myself against it with all my weight. The lock gave way, and the door flying open, I came near to falling headlong down the stairs.

Still, I had succeeded. But I soon found that I was little nearer freedom than before. The passage was now dark, and the house-door, when I found my way to it, resisted all my efforts. This drove me to seek another egress, which it was far from easy to find. At length, and by dint of groping about, I hit on a door which led into a downstairs room; it was unlocked and I entered, feeling before me with my hands. The darkness, the silence of the empty house, and my hurry, formed a situation to appal the boldest; but I was desperate, and extending my arms I trod cautiously across the room to where the window should be, and sought for and found the shutters. I tried the bar, and to my joy felt it swing. I let it down softly and dragged the shutters open, and sweating at every pore, saw through the leaded panes the dark dull lane outside, with a faint light from a neighbouring window falling on the wall opposite.

I was seeking for a part of the window that opened, and wondering whether, failing that, I should have the courage to burst the casement and run for it, when a step approaching along the lane set my heart beating. The step came nearer and paused, and peering out, my face nearer the glass, I saw a man had come to a stand before the door. I looked, and then, to say that my knees quivered under me but faintly expresses the terror I felt! For as the man moved he brought himself within the circle of light I have mentioned, and at the same time he raised his face, doubtless after searching in his pocket for the key; and through the glass my eyes met those of Ferguson.