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Title: The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Contributor: Arthur Quiller-Couch

Release date: January 4, 2010 [eBook #30849]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON - SWANSTON EDITION, VOL. 20 ***

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

SWANSTON EDITION

VOLUME XX

Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
Copies are for sale.

This is No. ............

R. L. S. IN THE BOW OF THE SCHOONER “EQUATOR”

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS

STEVENSON

VOLUME TWENTY

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
AND COMPANY MDCCCCXII

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

ST. IVES

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A Tale of a Lion Rampant 3
II. A Tale of a Pair of Scissors 16
III. Major Chevenix comes into the Story and Goguelat Goes Out 23
IV. St. Ives gets a Bundle of Bank-notes 34
V. St. Ives is shown a House 42
VI. The Escape 50
VII. Swanston Cottage 60
VIII. The Hen-house 68
IX. Three is Company, and Four none 75
X. The Drovers 88
XI. The Great North Road 99
XII. I follow a Covered Cart nearly to my Destination 110
XIII. I meet Two of my Countrymen 122
XIV. Travels of the Covered Cart 131
XV. The Adventure of the Attorney’s Clerk 138
XVI. The Home-coming of Mr. Rowley’s Viscount 154
XVII. The Despatch-box 163
XVIII. Mr. Romaine calls me Names 172
XIX. The Devil and all at Amersham Place 182
XX. After the Storm 193
XXI. I become the Owner of a Claret-coloured Chaise 204
XXII. Character and Acquirements of Mr. Rowley 214

XXIII. The Adventure of the Runaway Couple 224
XXIV. The Inn-keeper of Kirkby-Lonsdale 236
XXV. I meet a Cheerful Extravagant 244
XXVI. The Cottage at Night 251
XXVII. The Sabbath-day 261
XXVIII. Events of Monday: The Lawyer’s Party 272
XXIX. Events of Tuesday: The Toils Closing 286
XXX. Events of Wednesday: The University of Cramond 298

The remaining Chapters are by A. T. Quiller-Couch

XXXI. Events of Thursday: The Assembly Ball 310
XXXII. Events of Friday Morning: The Cutting of the Gordian Knot 327
XXXIII. The Incomplete Aëronauts 340
XXXIV. Captain Colenso 359
XXXV. In Paris.—Alain plays his Last Card 378
XXXVI. I go to claim Flora 394

ST. IVES
BEING

THE ADVENTURES OF
A FRENCH PRISONER IN ENGLAND

ST. IVES

CHAPTER I

A TALE OF A LION RAMPANT

It was in the month of May 1813 that I was so unlucky as to fall at last into the
hands of the enemy. My knowledge of the English language had marked me
out for a certain employment. Though I cannot conceive a soldier refusing to
incur the risk, yet to be hanged for a spy is a disgusting business; and I was
relieved to be held a prisoner of war. Into the Castle of Edinburgh, standing in
the midst of that city on the summit of an extraordinary rock, I was cast with
several hundred fellow-sufferers, all privates like myself, and the more part of
them, by an accident, very ignorant, plain fellows. My English, which had
brought me into that scrape, now helped me very materially to bear it. I had a
thousand advantages. I was often called to play the part of an interpreter,
whether of orders or complaints, and thus brought in relations, sometimes of
mirth, sometimes almost of friendship, with the officers in charge. A young
lieutenant singled me out to be his adversary at chess, a game in which I was
extremely proficient, and would reward me for my gambits with excellent
cigars. The major of the battalion took lessons of French from me while at
breakfast, and was sometimes so obliging as to have me join him at the meal.
Chevenix was his name. He was stiff as a drum-major and selfish as an
Englishman, but a fairly conscientious pupil and a fairly upright man. Little
did I suppose that his ramrod body and frozen face would, in the end, step in

between me and all my dearest wishes; that upon this precise, regular, icy
soldier-man my fortunes should so nearly shipwreck! I never liked, but yet I
trusted him; and though it may seem but a trifle, I found his snuff-box with the
bean in it come very welcome.

For it is strange how grown men and seasoned soldiers can go back in life;
so that after but a little while in prison, which is after all the next thing to
being in the nursery, they grow absorbed in the most pitiful, childish interests,
and a sugar-biscuit or a pinch of snuff become things to follow after and
scheme for!

We made but a poor show of prisoners. The officers had been all offered
their parole, and had taken it. They lived mostly in suburbs of the city, lodging
with modest families, and enjoyed their freedom and supported the almost
continual evil tidings of the Emperor as best they might. It chanced I was the
only gentleman among the privates who remained. A great part were ignorant
Italians, of a regiment that had suffered heavily in Catalonia. The rest were
mere diggers of the soil, treaders of grapes, or hewers of wood, who had been
suddenly and violently preferred to the glorious state of soldiers. We had but
the one interest in common: each of us who had any skill with his fingers
passed the hours of his captivity in the making of little toys and articles of
Paris; and the prison was daily visited at certain hours by a concourse of
people of the country, come to exult over our distress, or—it is more tolerant
to suppose—their own vicarious triumph. Some moved among us with a
decency of shame or sympathy. Others were the most offensive personages in
the world, gaped at us as if we had been baboons, sought to evangelise us to
their rustic, northern religion, as though we had been savages, or tortured us
with intelligence of disasters to the arms of France. Good, bad, and indifferent,
there was one alleviation to the annoyance of these visitors; for it was the
practice of almost all to purchase some specimen of our rude handiwork. This
led, amongst the prisoners, to a strong spirit of competition. Some were neat of
hand, and (the genius of the French being always distinguished) could place

upon sale little miracles of dexterity and taste. Some had a more engaging
appearance; fine features were found to do as well as fine merchandise, and an
air of youth in particular (as it appealed to the sentiment of pity in our visitors)
to be a source of profit. Others, again, enjoyed some acquaintance with the
language, and were able to recommend the more agreeably to purchasers such
trifles as they had to sell. To the first of these advantages I could lay no claim,
for my fingers were all thumbs. Some at least of the others I possessed; and
finding much entertainment in our commerce, I did not suffer my advantages
to rust. I have never despised the social arts, in which it is a national boast that
every Frenchman should excel. For the approach of particular sorts of visitors I
had a particular manner of address, and even of appearance, which I could
readily assume and change on the occasion rising. I never lost an opportunity
to flatter either the person of my visitor, if it should be a lady, or, if it should be
a man, the greatness of his country in war. And in case my compliments should
miss their aim, I was always ready to cover my retreat with some agreeable
pleasantry, which would often earn me the name of an “oddity” or a “droll
fellow.” In this way, although I was so left-handed a toy-maker, I made out to
be rather a successful merchant; and found means to procure many little
delicacies and alleviations, such as children or prisoners desire.

I am scarcely drawing the portrait of a very melancholy man. It is not indeed
my character; and I had, in a comparison with my comrades, many reasons for
content. In the first place, I had no family: I was an orphan and a bachelor;
neither wife nor child awaited me in France. In the second, I had never wholly
forgot the emotions with which I first found myself a prisoner; and although a
military prison be not altogether a garden of delights, it is still preferable to a
gallows. In the third, I am almost ashamed to say it, but I found a certain
pleasure in our place of residence: being an obsolete and really mediæval
fortress, high placed and commanding extraordinary prospects, not only over
sea, mountain, and champaign, but actually over the thoroughfares of a capital
city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of the
inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps. And lastly, although I was not

insensible to the restraints of prison or the scantiness of our rations, I
remembered I had sometimes eaten quite as ill in Spain, and had to mount
guard and march perhaps a dozen leagues into the bargain. The first of my
troubles, indeed, was the costume we were obliged to wear. There is a horrible
practice in England to trick out in ridiculous uniforms, and as it were to brand
in mass, not only convicts but military prisoners, and even the children in
charity schools. I think some malignant genius had found his masterpiece of
irony in the dress which we were condemned to wear: jacket, waistcoat, and
trousers of a sulphur or mustard yellow, and a shirt of blue-and-white striped
cotton. It was conspicuous, it was cheap, it pointed us out to laughter—we,
who were old soldiers, used to arms, and some of us showing noble scars,—
like a set of lugubrious zanies at a fair. The old name of that rock on which our
prison stood was (I have heard since then) the “Painted Hill.” Well, now it was
all painted a bright yellow with our costumes; and the dress of the soldiers
who guarded us being of course the essential British red rag, we made up
together the elements of a lively picture of hell. I have again and again looked
round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger rise, and choked upon
tears, to behold them thus parodied. The more part, as I have said, were
peasants; somewhat bettered perhaps by the drill-sergeant, but for all that
ungainly, loutish fellows, with no more than a mere barrack-room smartness of
address: indeed, you could have seen our army nowhere more discreditably
represented than in this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in fancy,
and blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage would but point the insult
of the travesty. And I remembered the days when I wore the coarse but
honourable coat of a soldier; and remembered further back how many of the
noble, the fair, and the gracious had taken a delight to tend my childhood....
But I must not recall these tender and sorrowful memories twice; their place is
further on, and I am now upon another business. The perfidy of the Britannic
Government stood nowhere more openly confessed than in one particular of
our discipline: that we were shaved twice in the week. To a man who has loved
all his life to be fresh shaven, can a more irritating indignity be devised?
Monday and Thursday were the days. Take the Thursday, and conceive the

picture I must present by Sunday evening! And Saturday, which was almost as
bad, was the great day for visitors.

Those who came to our market were of all qualities, men and women, the
lean and the stout, the plain and the fairly pretty. Sure, if people at all
understood the power of beauty, there would be no prayers addressed except to
Venus; and the mere privilege of beholding a comely woman is worth paying
for. Our visitors, upon the whole, were not much to boast of; and yet, sitting in
a corner and very much ashamed of myself and my absurd appearance, I have
again and again tasted the finest, the rarest, and the most ethereal pleasures in
a glance of an eye that I should never see again—and never wanted to. The
flower of the hedgerow and the star in heaven satisfy and delight us: how
much more the look of that exquisite being who was created to bear and rear,
to madden and rejoice, mankind!

There was one young lady in particular, about eighteen or nineteen, tall, of a
gallant carriage, and with a profusion of hair in which the sun found threads of
gold. As soon as she came in the courtyard (and she was a rather frequent
visitor) it seemed I was aware of it. She had an air of angelic candour, yet of a
high spirit; she stepped like a Diana, every movement was noble and free. One
day there was a strong east wind; the banner was straining at the flagstaff;
below us the smoke of the city chimneys blew hither and thither in a thousand
crazy variations; and away out on the Forth we could see the ships lying down
to it and scudding. I was thinking what a vile day it was, when she appeared.
Her hair blew in the wind with changes of colour; her garments moulded her
with the accuracy of sculpture; the ends of her shawl fluttered about her ear
and were caught in again with an inimitable deftness. You have seen a pool on
a gusty day, how it suddenly sparkles and flashes like a thing alive? So this
lady’s face had become animated and coloured; and as I saw her standing,
somewhat inclined, her lips parted, a divine trouble in her eyes, I could have
clapped my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim her a genuine
daughter of the winds. What put it in my head, I know not: perhaps because it

was a Thursday and I was new from the razor; but I determined to engage her
attention no later than that day. She was approaching that part of the court in
which I sat with my merchandise, when I observed her handkerchief to escape
from her hands and fall to the ground; the next moment the wind had taken it
up and carried it within my reach. I was on foot at once: I had forgot my
mustard-coloured clothes, I had forgot the private soldier and his salute.
Bowing deeply, I offered her the slip of cambric.

“Madam,” said I, “your handkerchief. The wind brought it me.”

I met her eyes fully.

“I thank you, sir,” said she.

“The wind brought it me,” I repeated. “May I not take it for an omen? You
have an English proverb, ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.’”

“Well,” she said, with a smile, “’One good turn deserves another.’ I will see
what you have.”

She followed me to where my wares were spread out under lee of a piece of
cannon.

“Alas, mademoiselle!” said I, “I am no very perfect craftsman. This is
supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry. You may call this
a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am
afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything. Failures
for Sale should be on my signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous
Museum.” I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and
instantly became grave. “Strange, is it not,” I added, “that a grown man and a
soldier should be engaged upon such trash, and a sad heart produce anything
so funny to look at?”

An unpleasant voice summoned her at this moment by the name of Flora,
and she made a hasty purchase and rejoined her party.

A few days after she came again. But I must first tell you how she came to
be so frequent. Her aunt was one of those terrible British old maids of which
the world has heard much; and having nothing whatever to do, and a word or
two of French, she had taken what she called an interest in the French
prisoners. A big, bustling, bold old lady, she flounced about our market-place
with insufferable airs of patronage and condescension. She bought, indeed,
with liberality, but her manner of studying us through a quizzing-glass, and
playing cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any gratitude. She had a tail
behind her of heavy, obsequious old gentlemen, or dull, giggling misses, to
whom she appeared to be an oracle. “This one can really carve prettily: is he
not a quiz with his big whiskers?” she would say. “And this one,” indicating
myself with her gold eye-glass, “is, I assure you, quite an oddity.” The oddity,
you may be certain, ground his teeth. She had a way of standing in our midst,
nodding around, and addressing us in what she imagined to be French:
“Bienne, hommes! ça va bienne?” I took the freedom to reply in the same
lingo: “Bienne, femme! ça va couci-couci tout d’même, la bourgeoise!” And at
that, when we had all laughed, with a little more heartiness than was entirely
civil, “I told you he was quite an oddity!” says she in triumph. Needless to say,
these passages were before I had remarked the niece.

The aunt came on the day in question with a following rather more than
usually large, which she manœuvred to and fro about the market and lectured
to at rather more than usual length, and with rather less than her accustomed
tact. I kept my eyes down, but they were ever fixed in the same direction, quite
in vain. The aunt came and went, and pulled us out, and showed us off, like
caged monkeys; but the niece kept herself on the outskirts of the crowd, and
on the opposite side of the courtyard, and departed at last as she had come,
without a sign. Closely as I had watched her, I could not say her eyes had ever
rested on me for an instant; and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness
and blackness. I tore out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for
ever; I laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I lay
down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and gloated on her

charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the night. How trivial I thought
her! and how trivial her sex! A man might be an angel or an Apollo, and a
mustard-coloured coat would wholly blind them to his merits. I was a prisoner,
a slave, a contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering
countrymen. I would take the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes should
have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future should have the
chance to think I had looked at her with admiration. You cannot imagine any
one of a more resolute and independent spirit, or whose bosom was more
wholly mailed with patriotic arrogance, than I. Before I dropped asleep, I had
remembered all the infamies of Britain, and debited them in an overwhelming
column to Flora.

The next day, as I sat in my place, I became conscious there was some one
standing near; and behold, it was herself! I kept my seat, at first in the
confusion of my mind, later on from policy; and she stood, and leaned a little
over me, as in pity. She was very still and timid; her voice was low. Did I
suffer in my captivity? she asked me. Had I to complain of any hardship?

“Mademoiselle, I have not learned to complain,” said I. “I am a soldier of
Napoleon.”

She sighed. “At least you must regret La France,” said she, and coloured a
little as she pronounced the words, which she did with a pretty strangeness of
accent.

“What am I to say?” I replied. “If you were carried from this country, for
which you seem so wholly suited, where the very rains and winds seem to
become you like ornaments, would you regret, do you think? We must surely
all regret! the son to his mother, the man to his country; these are native
feelings.”

“You have a mother?” she asked.

“In heaven, mademoiselle,” I answered. “She, and my father also, went by
the same road to heaven as so many others of the fair and brave: they followed
their queen upon the scaffold. So, you see, I am not so much to be pitied in my
prison,” I continued: “there are none to wait for me; I am alone in the world.
’Tis a different case, for instance, with yon poor fellow in the cloth cap. His
bed is next to mine, and in the night I hear him sobbing to himself. He has a
tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments; and in the dark at night,
and sometimes by day when he can get me apart with him, he laments a
mother and a sweetheart. Do you know what made him take me for a
confidant?”

She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak. The look burned all
through me with a sudden vital heat.

“Because I had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his village!” I
continued. “The circumstance is quaint enough. It seems to bind up into one
the whole bundle of those human instincts that make life beautiful, and people
and places dear—and from which it would seem I am cut off!”

I rested my chin on my knee and looked before me on the ground. I had
been talking until then to hold her; but I was now not sorry she should go: an
impression is a thing so delicate to produce and so easy to overthrow!
Presently she seemed to make an effort.

“I will take this toy,” she said, laid a five-and-sixpenny piece in my hand,
and was gone ere I could thank her.

I retired to a place apart near the ramparts and behind a gun. The beauty, the
expression of her eyes, the tear that had trembled there, the compassion in her
voice, and a kind of wild elegance that consecrated the freedom of her
movements, all combined to enslave my imagination and inflame my heart.
What had she said? Nothing to signify; but her eyes had met mine, and the fire
they had kindled burned inextinguishably in my veins. I loved her; and I did
not fear to hope. Twice I had spoken with her; and in both interviews I had

been well inspired, I had engaged her sympathies, I had found words that she
must remember, that would ring in her ears at night upon her bed. What
mattered if I were half-shaved and my clothes a caricature? I was still a man,
and I had drawn my image on her memory. I was still a man, and, as I
trembled to realise, she was still a woman. Many waters cannot quench love;
and love, which is the law of the world, was on my side. I closed my eyes, and
she sprang up on the background of the darkness, more beautiful than in life.
“Ah!” thought I, “and you too, my dear, you too must carry away with you a
picture, that you are still to behold again and still to embellish. In the darkness
of night, in the streets by day, still you are to have my voice and face,
whispering, making love for me, encroaching on your shy heart. Shy as your
heart is, it is lodged there—I am lodged there; let the hours do their office—let
time continue to draw me ever in more lively, ever in more insidious colours.”
And then I had a vision of myself, and burst out laughing.

A likely thing, indeed, that a beggar-man, a private soldier, a prisoner in a
yellow travesty, was to awake the interest of this fair girl! I would not despair;
but I saw the game must be played fine and close. It must be my policy to hold
myself before her, always in a pathetic or pleasing attitude; never to alarm or
startle her; to keep my own secret locked in my bosom like a story of disgrace,
and let hers (if she could be induced to have one) grow at its own rate; to move
just so fast, and not by a hair’s-breadth any faster, than the inclination of her
heart. I was the man, and yet I was passive, tied by the foot in prison. I could
not go to her; I must cast a spell upon her at each visit, so that she should
return to me; and this was a matter of nice management. I had done it the last
time—it seemed impossible she should not come again after our interview;
and for the next I had speedily ripened a fresh plan. A prisoner, if he has one
great disability for a lover, has yet one considerable advantage: there is
nothing to distract him, and he can spend all his hours ripening his love and
preparing its manifestations. I had been then some days upon a piece of
carving—no less than the emblem of Scotland, the Lion Rampant. This I
proceeded to finish with what skill I was possessed of; and when at last I could

do no more to it (and, you may be sure, was already regretting I had done so
much), added on the base the following dedication:

À LA BELLE FLORA

le prisonnier reconnaissant

A. d. St. Y. d. K.

I put my heart into the carving of these letters. What was done with so much
ardour, it seemed scarce possible that any should behold with indifference; and
the initials would at least suggest to her my noble birth. I thought it better to
suggest: I felt that mystery was my stock-in-trade; the contrast between my
rank and manners, between my speech and my clothing, and the fact that she
could only think of me by a combination of letters, must all tend to increase
her interest and engage her heart.

This done, there was nothing left for me but to wait and to hope. And there
is nothing further from my character: in love and in war, I am all for the
forward movement; and these days of waiting made my purgatory. It is a fact
that I loved her a great deal better at the end of them, for love comes, like
bread, from a perpetual rehandling. And besides, I was fallen into a panic of
fear. How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty
days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major’s lessons, the
lieutenant’s chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a halfpenny addition to
the prison fare?

Days went by, and weeks; I had not the courage to calculate, and to-day I
have not the courage to remember; but at last she was there. At last I saw her
approach me in the company of a boy about her own age, and whom I divined
at once to be her brother.

I rose and bowed in silence.

“This is my brother, Mr. Ronald Gilchrist,” said she. “I have told him of
your sufferings. He is so sorry for you!”

“It is more than I have the right to ask,” I replied; “but among gentlefolk
these generous sentiments are natural. If your brother and I were to meet in the
field, we should meet like tigers; but when he sees me here disarmed and
helpless, he forgets his animosity.” (At which, as I had ventured to expect, this
beardless champion coloured to the ears for pleasure.) “Ah, my dear young
lady,” I continued, “there are many of your countrymen languishing in my
country, even as I do here. I can but hope there is found some French lady to
convey to each of them the priceless consolation of her sympathy. You have
given me alms; and more than alms—hope; and while you were absent I was
not forgetful. Suffer me to be able to tell myself that I have at least tried to
make a return; and for the prisoner’s sake deign to accept this trifle.”

So saying, I offered her my lion, which she took, looked at in some
embarrassment, and then, catching sight of the dedication, broke out with a cry
—

“Why, how did you know my name?” she exclaimed.

“When names are so appropriate, they should be easily guessed,” said I,
bowing. “But indeed, there was no magic in the matter. A lady called you by
name on the day I found your handkerchief, and I was quick to remark and
cherish it.”

“It is very, very beautiful,” said she, “and I shall be always proud of the
inscription.—Come, Ronald, we must be going.” She bowed to me as a lady
bows to her equal, and passed on (I could have sworn) with a heightened
colour.

I was overjoyed: my innocent ruse had succeeded; she had taken my gift
without a hint of payment, and she would scarce sleep in peace till she had

made it up to me. No greenhorn in matters of the heart, I was besides aware
that I had now a resident ambassador at the court of my lady. The lion might
be ill chiselled; it was mine. My hands had made and held it; my knife—or, to
speak more by the mark, my rusty nail—had traced those letters; and simple as
the words were, they would keep repeating to her that I was grateful and that I
found her fair. The boy had looked like a gawky, and blushed at a compliment;
I could see besides that he regarded me with considerable suspicion; yet he
made so manly a figure of a lad, that I could not withhold from him my
sympathy. And as for the impulse that had made her bring and introduce him, I
could not sufficiently admire it. It seemed to me finer than wit, and more
tender than a caress. It said (plain as language), “I do not and I cannot know
you. Here is my brother—you can know him; this is the way to me—follow
it.”

CHAPTER II

A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS

I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that discharged
our visitors into the street. Our little market was no sooner closed than we
were summoned to the distribution, and received our rations, which we were
then allowed to eat according to fancy in any part of our quarters.

I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably offensive; it
was possibly more so than they dreamed—as the sightseers at a menagerie
may offend in a thousand ways, and quite without meaning it, the noble and
unfortunate animals behind the bars; and there is no doubt but some of my
compatriots were susceptible beyond reason. Some of these old whiskerandos,

originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies, and
accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations, could ill brook
their change of circumstance. There was one man of the name of Goguelat, a
brute of the first water, who had enjoyed no touch of civilisation beyond the
military discipline, and had risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade
for which he was otherwise unfitted—that of maréchal des logis in the 22nd of
the line. In so far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good soldier; the
Cross was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in all things outside his line
of duty the man was no other than a brawling, bruising, ignorant pillar of low
pothouses. As a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was
the type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the mere view of
our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of annoyance, which he
would make haste to wreak on the nearest victim, and too often on myself.

It was so now. Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just withdrawn
into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing near. He wore an air
of hateful mirth, a set of young fools, among whom he passed for a wit,
followed him with looks of expectation; and I saw I was about to be the object
of some of his insufferable pleasantries. He took a place beside me, spread out
his rations, drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began.
What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who believed
their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among the gravel. For my
part, I thought at first I should have died. I had not dreamed the wretch was so
observant; but hate sharpens the ears, and he had counted our interviews and
actually knew Flora by her name. Gradually my coolness returned to me,
accompanied by a volume of living anger that surprised myself.

“Are you nearly done?” I asked. “Because if you are, I am about to say a
word or two myself.”

“O, fair play!” said he. “Turnabout! The Marquis of Carabas to the tribune.”

“Very well,” said I. “I have to inform you that I am a gentleman. You do not
know what that means, hey? Well, I will tell you. It is a comical sort of animal;
springs from another strange set of creatures they call ancestors; and, in
common with toads and other vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings. The
lion is a gentleman; he will not touch carrion. I am a gentleman, and I cannot
bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt. Sit still, Philippe Goguelat! sit
still and, do not say a word, or I shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our
guards are upon us. Here is your health!” said I, and pledged him in the prison
beer. “You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child,” I
continued, “who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to me and
some others of us mendicants. If the Emperor”—saluting—“if my Emperor
could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from your gross body. I cannot
do that; I cannot take away what his Majesty has given; but one thing I
promise you—I promise you, Goguelat, you shall be dead to-night.”

I had borne so much from him in the past, I believe he thought there was no
end to my forbearance, and he was at first amazed. But I have the pleasure to
think that some of my expressions had pierced through his thick hide; and
besides, the brute was truly a hero of valour, and loved fighting for itself.
Whatever the cause, at least, he had soon pulled himself together, and took the
thing (to do him justice) handsomely.

“And I promise you, by the devil’s horns, that you shall have the chance!”
said he, and pledged me again; and again I did him scrupulous honour.

The news of this defiance spread from prisoner to prisoner with the speed of
wings; every face was seen to be illuminated like those of the spectators at a
horse-race; and indeed you must first have tasted the active life of a soldier,
and then mouldered for a while in the tedium of a gaol, in order to understand,
perhaps even to excuse, the delight of our companions. Goguelat and I slept in
the same squad, which greatly simplified the business; and a committee of
honour was accordingly formed of our shed-mates. They chose for president a
sergeant-major in the 4th Dragoons, a greybeard of the army, an excellent

military subject, and a good man. He took the most serious view of his
functions, visited us both, and reported our replies to the committee. Mine was
of a decent firmness. I told him the young lady of whom Goguelat had spoken
had on several occasions given me alms. I reminded him that, if we were now
reduced to hold out our hands and sell pill boxes for charity, it was something
very new for soldiers of the Empire. We had all seen bandits standing at a
corner of a wood truckling for copper halfpence, and after their benefactors
were gone spitting out injuries and curses. “But,” said I, “I trust that none of us
will fall so low. As a Frenchman and a soldier, I owe that young child
gratitude, and am bound to protect her character, and to support that of the
army. You are my elder and my superior: tell me if I am not right.”

He was a quiet-mannered old fellow, and patted me with three fingers on the
back. “C’est bien, mon enfant,” says he, and returned to his committee.

Goguelat was no more accommodating than myself. “I do not like apologies
nor those that make them,” was his only answer. And there remained nothing
but to arrange the details of the meeting. So far as regards place and time we
had no choice; we must settle the dispute at night, in the dark, after a round
had passed by, and in the open middle of the shed under which we slept. The
question of arms was more obscure. We had a good many tools, indeed, which
we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of them
suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being nondescript, it
was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of the combatants. At length
a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a couple of tough wands being found in
a corner of the courtyard, one blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each
with resined twine—the twine coming I know not whence, but the resin from
the green pillars of the shed, which still sweated from the axe. It was a strange
thing to feel in one’s hand this weapon, which was no heavier than a riding-
rod, and which it was difficult to suppose would prove more dangerous. A
general oath was administered and taken, that no one should interfere in the

duel nor (suppose it to result seriously) betray the name of the survivor. And
with that, all being then ready, we composed ourselves to await the moment.

The evening fell cloudy; not a star was to be seen when the first round of the
night passed through our shed and wound off along the ramparts; and as we
took our places, we could still hear, over the murmurs of the surrounding city,
the sentries challenging its further passage. Laclas, the sergeant-major, set us
in our stations, engaged our wands, and left us. To avoid blood-stained
clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the chill of the
night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet. The man was better at fencing
than myself; he was vastly taller than I, being of a stature almost gigantic, and
proportionately strong. In the inky blackness of the shed it was impossible to
see his eyes; and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a
parade. I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my defect; and
as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself down and lunge at the
same moment. It was to play my life upon one card: should I not mortally
wound him, no defence would be left me; what was yet more appalling, I thus
ran the risk of bringing my own face against his scissor with the double force
of our assaults, and my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the
most readily expose.

“Allez!” said the sergeant-major.

Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my
manœuvre both had certainly been spitted. As it was, he did no more than
strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the girdle into a mortal
part; and that great bulk of a man, falling from his whole height, knocked me
immediately senseless.

When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and could
make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads crowded around
me. I sat up. “What is it?” I exclaimed.

“Hush!” said the sergeant-major. “Blessed be God, all is well.” I felt him
clasp my hand, and there were tears in his voice. “’Tis but a scratch, my child;
here is papa, who is taking good care of you. Your shoulder is bound up; we
have dressed you in your clothes again, and it will all be well.”

At this I began to remember. “And Goguelat?” I gasped.

“He cannot bear to be moved; he has his bellyful; ’tis a bad business,” said
the sergeant-major.

The idea of having killed a man with such an instrument as half a pair of
scissors seemed to turn my stomach. I am sure I might have killed a dozen
with a firelock, a sabre, a bayonet, or any accepted weapon, and been visited
by no such sickness of remorse. And to this feeling every unusual
circumstance of our rencounter, the darkness in which we had fought, our
nakedness, even the resin on the twine, appeared to contribute. I ran to my
fallen adversary, kneeled by him, and could only sob his name.

He bade me compose myself. “You have given me the key of the fields,
comrade,” said he. “Sans rancune!”

At this my horror redoubled. Here had we two expatriated Frenchmen
engaged in an ill-regulated combat like the battles of beasts. Here was he, who
had been all his life so great a ruffian, dying in a foreign land of this ignoble
injury, and meeting death with something of the spirit of a Bayard. I insisted
that the guards should be summoned and a doctor brought. “It may still be
possible to save him,” I cried.

The sergeant-major reminded me of our engagement. “If you had been
wounded,” said he, “you must have lain there till the patrol came by and found
you. It happens to be Goguelat—and so must he! Come, child, time to go to
by-by.” And as I still resisted, “Champdivers!” he said, “this is weakness. You
pain me.”

“Ay, off to your beds with you!” said Goguelat, and named us in a company
with one of his jovial gross epithets.

Accordingly the squad lay down in the dark and simulated, what they
certainly were far from experiencing, sleep. It was not yet late. The city, from
far below, and all around us, sent up a sound of wheels and feet and lively
voices. Yet awhile, and the curtain of the cloud was rent across, and in the
space of sky between the eaves of the shed and the irregular outline of the
ramparts a multitude of stars appeared. Meantime, in the midst of us lay
Goguelat, and could not always withhold himself from groaning.

We heard the round far off; heard it draw slowly nearer. Last of all, it turned
the corner and moved into our field of vision: two file of men and a corporal
with a lantern, which he swung to and fro, so as to cast its light in the recesses
of the yards and sheds.

“Hullo!” cried the corporal, pausing as he came by Goguelat.

He stooped with his lantern. All our hearts were flying.

“What devil’s work is this?” he cried, and with a startling voice summoned
the guard.

We were all afoot upon the instant; more lanterns and soldiers crowded in
front of the shed; an officer elbowed his way in. In the midst was the big naked
body, soiled with blood. Some one had covered him with his blanket; but as he
lay there in agony, he had partly thrown it off.

“This is murder!” cried the officer. “You wild beasts, you will hear of this
to-morrow.”

As Goguelat was raised and laid upon a stretcher, he cried to us a cheerful
and blasphemous farewell.

CHAPTER III

MAJOR CHEVENIX COMES INTO THE STORY AND GOGUELAT GOES OUT

There was never any talk of a recovery, and no time was lost in getting the
man’s deposition. He gave but the one account of it: that he had committed
suicide because he was sick of seeing so many Englishmen. The doctor vowed
it was impossible, the nature and direction of the wound forbidding it.
Goguelat replied that he was more ingenious than the other thought for, and
had propped up the weapon in the ground and fallen on the point—“just like
Nebuchadnezzar,” he added, winking to the assistants. The doctor, who was a
little, spruce, ruddy man of an impatient temper, pished and pshawed and
swore over his patient. “Nothing could be made of him!” he cried. “A perfect
heathen. If we could only find the weapon!” But the weapon had ceased to
exist. A little resined twine was perhaps blowing about in the Castle gutters;
some bits of broken stick may have trailed in corners; and behold, in the
pleasant air of the morning, a dandy prisoner trimming his nails with a pair of
scissors!

Finding the wounded man so firm, you may be sure the authorities did not
leave the rest of us in peace. No stone was left unturned. We were had in again
and again to be examined, now singly, now in twos and threes. We were
threatened with all sorts of impossible severities and tempted with all manner
of improbable rewards. I suppose I was five times interrogated, and came off
from each with flying colours. I am like old Souvaroff: I cannot understand a
soldier being taken aback by any question: he should answer, as he marches on
the fire, with an instant briskness and gaiety. I may have been short of bread,
gold, or grace; I was never found wanting in an answer. My comrades, if they
were not all so ready, were none of them less staunch; and I may say here at
once that the inquiry came to nothing at the time, and the death of Goguelat
remained a mystery of the prison. Such were the veterans of France! And yet I
should be disingenuous if I did not own this was a case apart; in ordinary

circumstances, some one might have stumbled or been intimidated into an
admission; and what bound us together with a closeness beyond that of mere
comrades was a secret to which we were all committed and a design in which
all were equally engaged. No need to inquire as to its nature: there is only one
desire, and only one kind of design, that blooms in prisons. And the fact that
our tunnel was near done supported and inspired us.

I came off in public, as I have said, with flying colours; the sittings of the
court of inquiry died away like a tune that no one listens to; and yet I was
unmasked—I, whom my very adversary defended, as good as confessed, as
good as told the nature of the quarrel, and by so doing prepared for myself in
the future a most anxious, disagreeable adventure. It was the third morning
after the duel, and Goguelat was still in life, when the time came round for me
to give Major Chevenix a lesson. I was fond of this occupation; not that he
paid me much—no more, indeed, than eighteenpence a month, the customary
figure, being a miser in the grain; but because I liked his breakfasts and (to
some extent) himself. At least, he was a man of education; and of the others
with whom I had any opportunity of speech, those that would not have held a
book upside down would have torn the pages out for pipe-lights. For I must
repeat again that our body of prisoners was exceptional: there was in
Edinburgh Castle none of that educational busyness that distinguished some of
the other prisons, so that men entered them unable to read, and left them fit for
high employments. Chevenix was handsome, and surprisingly young to be a
major: six feet in his stockings, well set up, with regular features and very
clear grey eyes. It was impossible to pick a fault in him, and yet the sum-total
was displeasing. Perhaps he was too clean; he seemed to bear about with him
the smell of soap. Cleanliness is good, but I cannot bear a man’s nails to seem
japanned. And certainly he was too self-possessed and cold. There was none of
the fire of youth, none of the swiftness of the soldier, in this young officer. His
kindness was cold, and cruel cold; his deliberation exasperating. And perhaps
it was from this character, which is very much the opposite of my own, that

even in these days, when he was of service to me, I approached him with
suspicion and reserve.

I looked over his exercise in the usual form, and marked six faults.

“H’m. Six,” says he, looking at the paper. “Very annoying! I can never get it
right.”

“O, but you make excellent progress!” I said. I would not discourage him,
you understand, but he was congenitally unable to learn French. Some fire, I
think, is needful, and he had quenched his fire in soapsuds.

He put the exercise down, leaned his chin upon his hand, and looked at me
with clear, severe eyes.

“I think we must have a little talk,” said he.

“I am entirely at your disposition,” I replied; but I quaked, for I knew what
subject to expect.

“You have been some time giving me these lessons,” he went on, “and I am
tempted to think rather well of you. I believe you are a gentleman.”

“I have that honour, sir,” said I.

“You have seen me for the same period. I do not know how I strike you; but
perhaps you will be prepared to believe that I also am a man of honour,” said
he.

“I require no assurances; the thing is manifest,” and I bowed.

“Very well, then,” said he. “What about this Goguelat?”

“You heard me yesterday before the court,” I began. “I was awakened only
——”

“O yes; I ‘heard you yesterday before the court,’ no doubt,” he interrupted,
“and I remember perfectly that you were ‘awakened only.’ I could repeat the

most of it by rote, indeed. But do you suppose that I believed you for a
moment?”

“Neither would you believe me if I were to repeat it here,” said I.

“I may be wrong—we shall soon see,” says he; “but my impression is that
you will not ‘repeat it here.’ My impression is that you have come into this
room, and that you will tell me something before you go out.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Let me explain,” he continued. “Your evidence, of course, is nonsense. I
put it by, and the court put it by.”

“My compliments and thanks!” said I.

“You must know—that’s the short and the long,” he proceeded. “All of you
in Shed B are bound to know. And I want to ask you where is the common
sense of keeping up this farce, and maintaining this cock-and-bull story
between friends. Come, come, my good fellow, own yourself beaten, and
laugh at it yourself.”

“Well, I hear you—go ahead,” said I. “You put your heart in it.”

He crossed his legs slowly. “I can very well understand,” he began, “that
precautions have had to be taken. I dare say an oath was administered. I can
comprehend that perfectly.” (He was watching me all the time with his cold,
bright eyes.) “And I can comprehend that, about an affair of honour, you
would be very particular to keep it.”

“About an affair of honour?” I repeated, like a man quite puzzled.

“It was not an affair of honour, then?” he asked.

“What was not? I do not follow,” said I.

He gave no sign of impatience; simply sat a while silent, and began again in
the same placid and good-natured voice: “The court and I were at one in
setting aside your evidence. It could not deceive a child. But there was a
difference between myself and the other officers, because I knew my man and
they did not. They saw in you a common soldier, and I knew you for a
gentleman. To them your evidence was a leash of lies, which they yawned to
hear you telling. Now, I was asking myself, how far will a gentleman go? Not
surely so far as to help hush a murder up? So that—when I heard you tell how
you knew nothing of the matter, and were only awakened by the corporal, and
all the rest of it—I translated your statements into something else. Now,
Champdivers,” he cried, springing up lively and coming towards me with
animation, “I am going to tell you what that was, and you are going to help me
to see justice done: how, I don’t know, for of course you are under oath—but
somehow. Mark what I’m going to say.”

At that moment he laid a heavy, hard grip upon my shoulder; and whether
he said anything more or came to a full stop at once, I am sure I could not tell
you to this day. For, as the devil would have it, the shoulder he laid hold of
was the one Goguelat had pinked. The wound was but a scratch; it was healing
with the first intention; but in the clutch of Major Chevenix it gave me agony.
My head swam; the sweat poured off my face; I must have grown deadly pale.

He removed his hand as suddenly as he had laid it there.

“What is wrong with you?” said he.

“It is nothing,” said I. “A qualm. It has gone by.”

“Are you sure?” said he. “You are as white as a sheet.”

“O no, I assure you! Nothing whatever. I am my own man again,” I said,
though I could scarce command my tongue.

“Well, shall I go on again?” says he. “Can you follow me?”

“O, by all means!” said I, and mopped my streaming face upon my sleeve,
for you may be sure in those days I had no handkerchief.

“If you are sure you can follow me. That was a very sudden and sharp
seizure,” he said doubtfully. “But if you are sure, all right, and here goes. An
affair of honour among you fellows would, naturally, be a little difficult to
carry out; perhaps it would be impossible to have it wholly regular. And yet a
duel might be very irregular in form, and, under the peculiar circumstances of
the case, loyal enough in effect. Do you take me? Now, as a gentleman and a
soldier.”

His hand rose again at the words and hovered over me. I could bear no
more, and winced away from him. “No,” I cried, “not that. Do not put your
hand upon my shoulder. I cannot bear it. It is rheumatism,” I made haste to
add. “My shoulder is inflamed and very painful.”

He returned to his chair and deliberately lighted a cigar.

“I am sorry about your shoulder,” he said at last. “Let me send for the
doctor.”

“Not in the least,” said I. “It is a trifle. I am quite used to it. It does not
trouble me in the smallest. At any rate, I don’t believe in doctors.”

“All right,” said he, and sat and smoked a good while in a silence which I
would have given anything to break. “Well,” he began presently, “I believe
there is nothing left for me to learn. I presume I may say that I know all.”

“About what?” said I boldly.

“About Goguelat,” said he.

“I beg your pardon. I cannot conceive,” said I.

“O,” says the major, “the man fell in a duel, and by your hand! I am not an
infant.”

“By no means,” said I. “But you seem to me to be a good deal of a theorist.”

“Shall we test it?” he asked. “The doctor is close by. If there is not an open
wound on your shoulder, I am wrong. If there is——” He waved his hand.
“But I advise you to think twice. There is a deuce of a nasty drawback to the
experiment—that what might have remained private between us two becomes
public property.”

“O, well!” said I, with a laugh, “anything rather than a doctor! I cannot bear
the breed.”

His last words had a good deal relieved me, but I was still far from
comfortable.

Major Chevenix smoked a while, looking now at his cigar ash, now at me.
“I’m a soldier myself,” he says presently, “and I’ve been out in my time and
hit my man. I don’t want to run any one into a corner for an affair that was at
all necessary or correct. At the same time, I want to know that much, and I’ll
take your word of honour for it. Otherwise, I shall be very sorry, but the doctor
must be called in.”

“I neither admit anything nor deny anything,” I returned. “But if this form
of words will suffice you, here is what I say: I give you my parole, as a
gentleman and a soldier, there has nothing taken place amongst us prisoners
that was not honourable as the day.”

“All right,” says he. “That was all I wanted. You can go now, Champdivers.”

And as I was going out he added, with a laugh: “By the bye, I ought to
apologise: I had no idea I was applying the torture!”

The same afternoon the doctor came into the courtyard with a piece of paper
in his hand. He seemed hot and angry, and had certainly no mind to be polite.

“Here!” he cried. “Which of you fellows knows any English? O!”—spying
me—“there you are, what’s your name! You’ll do. Tell these fellows that the

other fellow’s dying. He’s booked; no use talking; I expect he’ll go by
evening. And tell them I don’t envy the feelings of the fellow who spiked him.
Tell them that first.”

I did so.

“Then you can tell ’em,” he resumed, “that the fellow, Goggle—what’s his
name?—wants to see some of them before he gets his marching orders. If I got
it right, he wants to kiss or embrace you, or some sickening stuff. Got that?
Then here’s a list he’s had written, and you’d better read it out to them—I
can’t make head or tail of your beastly names—and they can answer present,
and fall in against that wall.”

It was with a singular movement of incongruous feelings that I read the first
name on the list. I had no wish to look again on my own handiwork; my flesh
recoiled from the idea; and how could I be sure what reception he designed to
give me? The cure was in my own hand; I could pass that first name over—the
doctor would not know—and I might stay away. But to the subsequent great
gladness of my heart, I did not dwell for an instant on the thought, walked over
to the designated wall, faced about, read out the name “Champdivers,” and
answered myself with the word “Present.”

There were some half-dozen on the list, all told; and as soon as we were
mustered, the doctor led the way to the hospital, and we followed after, like a
fatigue-party, in single file. At the door he paused, told us “the fellow” would
see each of us alone, and, as soon as I had explained that, sent me by myself
into the ward. It was a small room, whitewashed; a south window stood open
on a vast depth of air and a spacious and distant prospect; and from deep
below, in the Grassmarket, the voices of hawkers came up clear and far away.
Hard by, on a little bed, lay Goguelat. The sunburn had not yet faded from his
face, and the stamp of death was already there. There was something wild and
unmannish in his smile, that took me by the throat; only death and love know
or have ever seen it. And when he spoke, it seemed to shame his coarse talk.

He held out his arms as if to embrace me. I drew near with incredible
shrinkings, and surrendered myself to his arms with overwhelming disgust.
But he only drew my ear down to his lips.

“Trust me,” he whispered. “Je suis bon bougre, moi. I’ll take it to hell with
me and tell the devil.”

Why should I go on to reproduce his grossness and trivialities? All that he
thought, at that hour, was even noble, though he could not clothe it otherwise
than in the language of a brutal farce. Presently he bade me call the doctor; and
when that officer had come in, raised himself a little up in his bed, pointed first
to himself and then to me, who stood weeping by his side, and several times
repeated the expression, “Frinds—frinds—dam frinds.”

To my great surprise the doctor appeared very much affected. He nodded his
little bob-wigged head at us, and said repeatedly, “All right, Johnny—me
comprong.”

Then Goguelat shook hands with me, embraced me again, and I went out of
the room sobbing like an infant.

How often have I not seen it, that the most unpardonable fellows make the
happiest exits! It is a fate we may well envy them. Goguelat was detested in
life; in the last three days, by his admirable staunchness and consideration, he
won every heart; and when word went about the prison the same evening that
he was no more, the voice of conversation became hushed as in a house of
mourning.

For myself, I was like a man distracted; I cannot think what ailed me: when
I awoke the following day, nothing remained of it; but that night I was filled
with a gloomy fury of the nerves. I had killed him; he had done his utmost to
protect me; I had seen him with that awful smile. And so illogical and useless
is this sentiment of remorse that I was ready, at a word or a look, to quarrel
with somebody else. I presume the disposition of my mind was imprinted on

my face; and when, a little after, I overtook, saluted, and addressed the doctor,
he looked on me with commiseration and surprise.

I had asked him if it was true.

“Yes,” he said, “the fellow’s gone.”

“Did he suffer much?” I asked.

“Devil a bit; passed away like a lamb,” said he. He looked on me a little,
and I saw his hand go to his fob. “Here, take that! no sense in fretting,” he
said, and, putting a silver twopenny-bit in my hand, he left me.

I should have had that twopenny framed to hang upon the wall, for it was
the man’s one act of charity in all my knowledge of him. Instead of that I stood
looking at it in my hand and laughed out bitterly, as I realised his mistake; then
went to the ramparts, and flung it far into the air like blood-money. The night
was falling; through an embrasure and across the gardened valley I saw the
lamp-lighters hasting along Princes Street with ladder and lamp, and looked on
moodily. As I was so standing a hand was laid upon my shoulder, and I turned
about. It was Major Chevenix, dressed for the evening, and his neckcloth
really admirably folded. I never denied the man could dress.

“Ah!” said he, “I thought it was you, Champdivers. So he’s gone?”

I nodded.

“Come, come,” said he, “you must cheer up. Of course it’s very distressing,
very painful and all that. But do you know, it ain’t such a bad thing either for
you or me? What with his death and your visit to him I am entirely reassured.”

So I was to owe my life to Goguelat at every point.

“I had rather not discuss it,” said I.

“Well,” said he, “one word more and I’ll agree to bury the subject. What did
you fight about?”

“O, what do men ever fight about?” I cried.

“A lady?” said he.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Deuce you did!” said he. “I should scarce have thought it of him.”

And at this my ill-humour broke fairly out in words. “He!” I cried. “He
never dared to address her—only to look at her and vomit his vile insults! She
may have given him sixpence: if she did, it may take him to heaven yet!”

At this I became aware of his eyes set upon me with a considering look, and
brought up sharply.

“Well, well,” said he. “Good-night to you, Champdivers. Come to me at
breakfast-time to-morrow, and we’ll talk of other subjects.”

I fully admit the man’s conduct was not bad: in writing it down so long after
the events I can even see that it was good.

CHAPTER IV

ST. IVES GETS A BUNDLE OF BANK-NOTES

I was surprised one morning, shortly after, to find myself the object of marked
consideration by a civilian and a stranger. This was a man of the middle age;
he had a face of a mulberry colour, round black eyes, comical tufted eyebrows,
and a protuberant forehead, and was dressed in clothes of a Quakerish cut. In
spite of his plainness, he had that inscrutable air of a man well-to-do in his
affairs. I conceived he had been some while observing me from a distance, for

a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon.
So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French
language, which he spoke with a good fluency but an abominable accent.

“I have the pleasure of addressing Monsieur le Vicomte Anne de Kéroual de
Saint-Yves?” said he.

“Well,” said I, “I do not call myself all that; but I have a right to, if I choose.
In the meanwhile I call myself plain Champdivers, at your disposal. It was my
mother’s name, and good to go soldiering with.”

“I think not quite,” said he; “for if I remember rightly your mother also had
the particle. Her name was Florimonde de Champdivers.”

“Right again,” said I, “and I am extremely pleased to meet a gentleman so
well informed in my quarterings. Is monsieur Born himself?” This I said with
a great air of assumption, partly to conceal the degree of curiosity with which
my visitor had inspired me, and in part because it struck me as highly
incongruous and comical in my prison garb and on the lips of a private soldier.

He seemed to think so too, for he laughed.

“No, sir,” he returned, speaking this time in English; “I am not ‘born,’ as
you call it, and must content myself with dying, of which I am equally
susceptible with the best of you. My name is Mr. Romaine—Daniel Romaine
—a solicitor of London city, at your service; and, what will perhaps interest
you more, I am here at the request of your great-uncle, the Count.”

“What!” I cried, “does M. de Kéroual de Saint-Yves remember the existence
of such a person as myself, and will he deign to count kinship with a soldier of
Napoleon?”

“You speak English well,” observed my visitor.

“It has been a second language to me from a child,” said I. “I had an English
nurse; my father spoke English with me; and I was finished by a countryman

of yours and a dear friend of mine, a Mr. Vicary.”

A strong expression of interest came into the lawyer’s face.

“What!” he cried, “you knew poor Vicary?”

“For more than a year,” said I; “and shared his hiding-place for many
months.”

“And I was his clerk, and have succeeded him in business,” said he.
“Excellent man! It was on the affairs of M. de Kéroual that he went to that
accursed country, from which he was never destined to return. Do you chance
to know his end, sir?”

“I am sorry,” said I, “I do. He perished miserably at the hands of a gang of
banditti, such as we call chauffeurs. In a word, he was tortured, and died of it.
See,” I added, kicking off one shoe, for I had no stockings; “I was no more
than a child, and see how they had begun to treat myself.”

He looked at the mark of my old burn with a certain shrinking. “Beastly
people!” I heard him mutter to himself.

“The English may say so with a good grace,” I observed politely.

Such speeches were the coin in which I paid my way among this credulous
race. Ninety per cent. of our visitors would have accepted the remark as
natural in itself and creditable to my powers of judgment, but it appeared my
lawyer was more acute.

“You are not entirely a fool, I perceive,” said he.

“No,” said I; “not wholly.”

“And yet it is well to beware of the ironical mood,” he continued. “It is a
dangerous instrument. Your great uncle has, I believe, practised it very much,
until it is now become a problem what he means.”

“And that brings me back to what you will admit is a most natural inquiry,”
said I. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? how did you recognise me?
and how did you know I was here?”

Carefully separating his coat skirts, the lawyer took a seat beside me on the
edge of the flags.

“It is rather an odd story,” says he, “and, with your leave, I’ll answer the
second question first. It was from a certain resemblance you bear to your
cousin, M. le Vicomte.”

“I trust, sir, that I resemble him advantageously,” said I.

“I hasten to reassure you,” was the reply: “you do. To my eyes, M. Alain de
Saint-Yves has scarce a pleasing exterior. And yet, when I knew you were
here, and was actually looking for you—why, the likeness helped. As for how I
came to know your whereabouts, by an odd enough chance, it is again M.
Alain we have to thank. I should tell you, he has for some time made it his
business to keep M. de Kéroual informed of your career; with what purpose I
leave you to judge. When he first brought the news of your—that you were
serving Buonaparte, it seemed it might be the death of the old gentleman, so
hot was his resentment. But from one thing to another, matters have a little
changed. Or I should rather say, not a little. We learned you were under orders
for the Peninsula, to fight the English; then that you had been commissioned
for a piece of bravery, and were again reduced to the ranks. And from one
thing to another (as I say), M. de Kéroual became used to the idea that you
were his kinsman and yet served with Buonaparte, and filled instead with
wonder that he should have another kinsman who was so remarkably well
informed of events in France. And now it became a very disagreeable question,
whether the young gentleman was not a spy? In short, sir, in seeking to
disserve you, he had accumulated against himself a load of suspicions.”

My visitor now paused, took snuff, and looked at me with an air of
benevolence.

“Good God, sir!” says I, “this is a curious story.”

“You will say so before I have done,” said he. “For there have two events
followed. The first of these was an encounter of M. de Kéroual and M. de
Mauséant.”

“I know the man to my cost,” said I; “it was through him I lost my
commission.”

“Do you tell me so?” he cried. “Why, here is news!”

“O, I cannot complain!” said I. “I was in the wrong. I did it with my eyes
open. If a man gets a prisoner to guard and lets him go, the least he can expect
is to be degraded.”

“You will be paid for it,” said he. “You did well for yourself and better for
your king.”

“If I had thought I was injuring my emperor,” said I, “I would have let M.
de Mauséant burn in hell ere I had helped him, and be sure of that! I saw in
him only a private person in a difficulty: I let him go in private charity; not
even to profit myself will I suffer it to be misunderstood.”

“Well, well,” said the lawyer, “no matter now. This is a foolish warmth—a
very misplaced enthusiasm, believe me! The point of the story is that M. de
Mauséant spoke of you with gratitude, and drew your character in such a
manner as greatly to affect your uncle’s views. Hard upon the back of which,
in came your humble servant, and laid before him the direct proof of what we
had been so long suspecting. There was no dubiety permitted. M. Alain’s
expensive way of life, his clothes and mistresses, his dicing and racehorses,
were all explained: he was in the pay of Buonaparte, a hired spy, and a man
that held the strings of what I can only call a convolution of extremely fishy
enterprises. To do M. de Kéroual justice, he took it in the best way imaginable,
destroyed the evidences of the one great-nephew’s disgrace—and transferred
his interest wholly to the other.”

“What am I to understand by that?” said I.

“I will tell you,” says he. “There is a remarkable inconsistency in human
nature which gentlemen of my cloth have a great deal of occasion to observe.
Selfish persons can live without chick or child, they can live without all
mankind except perhaps the barber and the apothecary; but when it comes to
dying, they seem physically unable to die without an heir. You can apply this
principle for yourself. Viscount Alain, though he scarce guesses it, is no longer
in the field. Remains, Viscount Anne.”

“I see,” said I, “you give a very unfavourable impression of my uncle, the
Count.”

“I had not meant it,” said he. “He has led a loose life—sadly loose—but he
is a man it is impossible to know and not to admire; his courtesy is exquisite.”

“And so you think there is actually a chance for me?” I asked.

“Understand,” said he: “in saying as much as I have done, I travel quite
beyond my brief. I have been clothed with no capacity to talk of wills, or
heritages, or your cousin. I was sent here to make but the one communication:
that M. de Kéroual desires to meet his great-nephew.”

“Well,” said I, looking about me on the battlements by which we sat
surrounded, “this is a case in which Mahomet must certainly come to the
mountain.”

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Romaine; “you know already your uncle is an aged
man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up, and his death
shortly looked for. No, no, there is no doubt about it—it is the mountain that
must come to Mahomet.”

“From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant,” said I; “but you
are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men’s secrets, and I see you keep that

of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a truculent patriotism, to say the
least.”

“I am first of all the lawyer of your family!” says he.

“That being so,” said I, “I can perhaps stretch a point myself. This rock is
very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a devil of a fall from
almost any part of it, and yet I believe I have a pair of wings that might carry
me just so far as to the bottom. Once at the bottom I am helpless.”

“And perhaps it is just then that I could step in,” returned the lawyer.
“Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess, and on which I
offer no opinion——”

But here I interrupted him. “One word ere you go further. I am under no
parole,” said I.

“I understood so much,” he replied, “although some of you French gentry
find their word sit lightly on them.”

“Sir, I am not one of those,” said I.

“To do you plain justice, I do not think you one,” said he. “Suppose
yourself, then, set free and at the bottom of the rock,” he continued, “although
I may not be able to do much, I believe I can do something to help you on your
road. In the first place I would carry this, whether in an inside pocket or in my
shoe.” And he passed me a bundle of bank-notes.

“No harm in that,” said I, at once concealing them.

“In the second place,” he resumed, “it is a great way from here to where
your uncle lives—Amersham Place, not far from Dunstable; you have a great
part of Britain to get through; and for the first stages, I must leave you to your
own luck and ingenuity. I have no acquaintance here in Scotland, or at least”
(with a grimace) “no dishonest ones. But further to the south, about Wakefield,
I am told there is a gentleman called Burchell Fenn, who is not so particular as

some others, and might be willing to give you a cast forward. In fact, sir, I
believe it’s the man’s trade: a piece of knowledge that burns my mouth. But
that is what you get by meddling with rogues; and perhaps the biggest rogue
now extant, M. de Saint-Yves, is your cousin, M. Alain.”

“If this be a man of my cousin’s,” I observed, “I am perhaps better to keep
clear of him?”

“It was through some paper of your cousin’s that we came across his trail,”
replied the lawyer. “But I am inclined to think, so far as anything is safe in
such a nasty business, you might apply to the man Fenn. You might even, I
think, use the Viscount’s name; and the little trick of family resemblance might
come in. How, for instance, if you were to call yourself his brother?”

“It might be done,” said I. “But look here a moment. You propose to me a
very difficult game: I have apparently a devil of an opponent in my cousin;
and, being a prisoner of war, I can scarcely be said to hold good cards. For
what stakes, then, am I playing?”

“They are very large,” said he. “Your great-uncle is immensely rich—
immensely rich. He was wise in time; he smelt the Revolution long before;
sold all that he could, and had all that was movable transported to England
through my firm. There are considerable estates in England; Amersham Place
itself is very fine; and he has much money, wisely invested. He lives, indeed,
like a prince. And of what use is it to him? He has lost all that was worth living
for—his family, his country; he has seen his king and queen murdered; he has
seen all these miseries and infamies,” pursued the lawyer, with a rising
inflection and a heightening colour; and then broke suddenly off,—“In short,
sir, he has seen all the advantages of that government for which his nephew
carries arms, and he has the misfortune not to like them.”

“You speak with a bitterness that I suppose I must excuse,” said I; “yet
which of us has the more reason to be bitter? This man, my uncle, M. de
Kéroual, fled. My parents, who were less wise perhaps, remained. In the

beginning they were even republicans; to the end they could not be persuaded
to despair of the people. It was a glorious folly, for which, as a son, I reverence
them. First one and then the other perished. If I have any mark of a gentleman,
all who taught me died upon the scaffold, and my last school of manners was
the prison of the Abbaye. Do you think you can teach bitterness to a man with
a history like mine?”

“I have no wish to try,” said he. “And yet there is one point I cannot
understand: I cannot understand that one of your blood and experience should
serve the Corsican. I cannot understand it: it seems as though everything
generous in you must rise against that—domination.”

“And perhaps,” I retorted, “had your childhood passed among wolves, you
would have been overjoyed yourself to see the Corsican Shepherd.”

“Well, well,” replied Mr. Romaine, “it may be. There are things that do not
bear discussion.”

And with a wave of his hand he disappeared abruptly down a flight of steps
and under the shadow of a ponderous arch.

CHAPTER V

ST. IVES IS SHOWN A HOUSE

The lawyer was scarce gone before I remembered many omissions; and chief
among these, that I had neglected to get Mr. Burchell Fenn’s address. Here was
an essential point neglected; and I ran to the head of the stairs to find myself
already too late. The lawyer was beyond my view; in the archway that led

downward to the Castle gate, only the red coat and the bright arms of a sentry
glittered in the shadow; and I could but return to my place upon the ramparts.

I am not very sure that I was properly entitled to this corner. But I was a
high favourite; not an officer, and scarce a private, in the Castle would have
turned me back, except upon a thing of moment; and whenever I desired to be
solitary, I was suffered to sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested. The
cliff went down before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing
trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across the valley I
had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street which serves as a promenade
to the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh. A singularity in a military prison,
that it should command a view on the chief thoroughfare!

It is not necessary that I should trouble you with the train of my reflections,
which turned upon the interview I had just concluded and the hopes that were
now opening before me. What is more essential, my eye (even while I thought)
kept following the movement of the passengers on Princes Street, as they
passed briskly to and fro—met, greeted, and bowed to each other—or entered
and left the shops, which are in that quarter, and, for a town of the Britannic
provinces, particularly fine. My mind being busy upon other things, the course
of my eye was the more random; and it chanced that I followed, for some time,
the advance of a young gentleman with a red head and a white greatcoat, for
whom I cared nothing at the moment, and of whom it is probable I shall be
gathered to my fathers without learning more. He seemed to have a large
acquaintance: his hat was for ever in his hand; and I dare say I had already
observed him exchanging compliments with half-a-dozen, when he drew up at
last before a young man and a young lady whose tall persons and gallant
carriage I thought I recognised.

It was impossible at such a distance that I could be sure, but the thought was
sufficient, and I craned out of the embrasure to follow them as long as
possible. To think that such emotions, that such a concussion of the blood, may
have been inspired by a chance resemblance, and that I may have stood and

thrilled there for a total stranger! This distant view, at least, whether of Flora or
of some one else, changed in a moment the course of my reflections. It was all
very well, and it was highly needful, I should see my uncle; but an uncle, a
great-uncle at that, and one whom I had never seen, leaves the imagination
cold; and if I were to leave the Castle, I might never again have the
opportunity of finding Flora. The little impression I had made, even supposing
I had made any, how soon it would die out! how soon I should sink to be a
phantom memory, with which (in after days) she might amuse a husband and
children! No, the impression must be clenched, the wax impressed with the
seal, ere I left Edinburgh. And at this the two interests that were now
contending in my bosom came together and became one. I wished to see Flora
again; and I wanted some one to further me in my flight and to get me new
clothes. The conclusion was apparent. Except for persons in the garrison itself,
with whom it was a point of honour and military duty to retain me captive, I
knew, in the whole country of Scotland, these two alone. If it were to be done
at all, they must be my helpers. To tell them of my designed escape while I
was still in bonds, would be to lay before them a most difficult choice. What
they might do in such a case, I could not in the least be sure of, for (the same
case arising) I was far from sure what I should do myself. It was plain I must
escape first. When the harm was done, when I was no more than a poor
wayside fugitive, I might apply to them with less offence and more security. To
this end it became necessary that I should find out where they lived and how to
reach it; and feeling a strong confidence that they would soon return to visit
me, I prepared a series of baits with which to angle for my information. It will
be seen the first was good enough.

Perhaps two days after, Master Ronald put in an appearance by himself. I
had no hold upon the boy, and pretermitted my design till I should have laid
court to him and engaged his interest. He was prodigiously embarrassed, not
having previously addressed me otherwise than by a bow and blushes; and he
advanced to me with an air of one stubbornly performing a duty, like a raw
soldier under fire. I laid down my carving; greeted him with a good deal of

formality, such as I thought he would enjoy; and finding him to remain silent,
branched off into narratives of my campaigns such as Goguelat himself might
have scrupled to endorse. He visibly thawed and brightened; drew more near
to where I sat; forgot his timidity so far as to put many questions; and at last,
with another blush, informed me he was himself expecting a commission.

“Well,” said I, “they are fine troops, your British troops in the Peninsula. A
young gentleman of spirit may well be proud to be engaged at the head of such
soldiers.”

“I know that,” he said; “I think of nothing else. I think shame to be dangling
here at home, and going through with this foolery of education, while others,
no older than myself, are in the field.”

“I cannot blame you,” said I. “I have felt the same myself.”

“There are—there are no troops, are there, quite so good as ours?” he asked.

“Well,” said I, “there is a point about them: they have a defect—they are not
to be trusted in a retreat. I have seen them behave very ill in a retreat.”

“I believe that is our national character,” he said—God forgive him!—with
an air of pride.

“I have seen your national character running away at least, and had the
honour to run after it!” rose to my lips, but I was not so ill-advised as to give it
utterance. Every one should be flattered, but boys and women without stint;
and I put in the rest of the afternoon narrating to him tales of British heroism,
for which I should not like to engage that they were all true.

“I am quite surprised,” he said at last. “People tell you the French are
insincere. Now, I think your sincerity is beautiful. I think you have a noble
character. I admire you very much. I am very grateful for your kindness to—to
one so young,” and he offered me his hand.

“I shall see you again soon?” said I.

“O, now! Yes, very soon,” said he. “I—I wish to tell you. I would not let
Flora—Miss Gilchrist, I mean—come to-day. I wished to see more of you
myself. I trust you are not offended: you know, one should be careful about
strangers.”

I approved his caution, and he took himself away: leaving me in a mixture
of contrarious feelings, part ashamed to have played on one so gullible, part
raging that I should have burned so much incense before the vanity of
England; yet, in the bottom of my soul, delighted to think I had made a friend
—or, at least, begun to make a friend—of Flora’s brother.

As I had half expected, both made their appearance the next day. I struck so
fine a shade betwixt the pride that is allowed to soldiers and the sorrowful
humility that befits a captive, that I declare, as I went to meet them, I might
have afforded a subject for a painter. So much was high comedy, I must
confess; but so soon as my eyes lighted full on her dark face and eloquent
eyes, the blood leaped into my cheeks—and that was nature! I thanked them,
but not the least with exultation; it was my cue to be mournful, and to take the
pair of them as one.

“I have been thinking,” I said, “you have been so good to me, both of you,
stranger and prisoner as I am, that I have been thinking how I could testify to
my gratitude. It may seem a strange subject for a confidence, but there is
actually no one here, even of my comrades, that knows me by my name and
title. By these I am called plain Champdivers, a name to which I have a right,
but not the name which I should bear, and which (but a little while ago) I must
hide like a crime. Miss Flora, suffer me to present to you the Vicomte Anne de
Kéroual de Saint-Yves, a private soldier.”

“I knew it!” cried the boy; “I knew he was a noble!”

And I thought the eyes of Miss Flora said the same, but more persuasively.
All through this interview she kept them on the ground, or only gave them to
me for a moment at a time, and with a serious sweetness.

“You may conceive, my friends, that this is rather a painful confession,” I
continued. “To stand here before you vanquished, a prisoner in a fortress, and
take my own name upon my lips, is painful to the proud. And yet I wished that
you should know me. Long after this we may yet hear of one another—
perhaps Mr. Gilchrist and myself in the field and from opposing camps—and it
would be a pity if we heard and did not recognise.”

They were both moved; and began at once to press upon me offers of
service, such as to lend me books, get me tobacco if I used it, and the like. This
would have been all mighty welcome, before the tunnel was ready. Now it
signified no more to me than to offer the transition I required.

“My dear friends,” I said—“for you must allow me to call you that, who
have no others within so many hundred leagues—perhaps you will think me
fanciful and sentimental; and perhaps indeed I am; but there is one service that
I would beg of you before all others. You see me set here on the top of this
rock in the midst of your city. Even with what liberty I have, I have the
opportunity to see a myriad roofs, and I dare to say, thirty leagues of sea and
land. All this hostile! Under all these roofs my enemies dwell; wherever I see
the smoke of a house rising, I must tell myself that some one sits before the
chimney and reads with joy of our reverses. Pardon me, dear friends, I know
that you must do the same, and I do not grudge at it! With you it is all
different. Show me your house, then, were it only the chimney, or, if that be
not visible, the quarter of the town in which it lies! So, when I look all about
me, I shall be able to say: ‘There is one house in which I am not quite unkindly
thought of.’”

Flora stood a moment.

“It is a pretty thought,” said she, “and, as far as regards Ronald and myself,
a true one. Come, I believe I can show you the very smoke out of our
chimney.”

So saying, she carried me round the battlements towards the opposite or
southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion almost immediately
overlooking the place of our projected flight. Thence we had a view of some
fore-shortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and irregular
country rising towards the Pentland Hills. The face of one of these summits
(say two leagues from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white
scars. And to this she directed my attention.

“You see these marks?” she said. “We call them the Seven Sisters. Follow a
little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops of some
trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them. That is Swanston Cottage,
where my brother and I are living with my aunt. If it gives you pleasure to see
it, I am glad. We, too, can see the Castle from a corner in the garden, and we
go there in the morning often—do we not, Ronald?—and we think of you, M.
de Saint-Yves; but I am afraid it does not altogether make us glad!”

“Mademoiselle!” said I, and indeed my voice was scarce under command,
“if you knew how your generous words—how even the sight of you—relieved
the horrors of this place, I believe, I hope, I know, you would be glad. I will
come here daily and look at that dear chimney and these green hills, and bless
you from the heart, and dedicate to you the prayers of this poor sinner. Ah! I
do not say they can avail!”

“Who can say that, M. de Saint-Yves?” she said softly.—“But I think it is
time we should be going.”

“High time,” said Ronald, whom (to say the truth) I had a little forgotten.

On the way back, as I was laying myself out to recover lost ground with the
youth, and to obliterate, if possible, the memory of my last and somewhat too
fervent speech, who should come past us but the major! I had to stand aside
and salute as he went by, but his eyes appeared entirely occupied with Flora.

“Who is that man?” she asked.

“He is a friend of mine,” said I. “I give him lessons in French, and he has
been very kind to me.”

“He stared,” she said,—“I do not say rudely; but why should he stare?”

“If you do not wish to be stared at, mademoiselle, suffer me to recommend a
veil,” said I.

She looked at me with what seemed anger. “I tell you the man stared,” she
said.

And Ronald added: “O, I don’t think he meant any harm. I suppose he was
just surprised to see us walking about with a pr—with M. Saint-Yves.”

But the next morning, when I went to Chevenix’s rooms, and after I had
dutifully corrected his exercise—“I compliment you on your taste,” said he to
me.

“I beg your pardon?” said I.

“O no, I beg yours,” said he. “You understand me perfectly, just as I do
you.”

I murmured something about enigmas.

“Well, shall I give you the key to the enigma?” said he, leaning back. “That
was the young lady whom Goguelat insulted and whom you avenged. I do not
blame you. She is a heavenly creature.”

“With all my heart, to the last of it!” said I. “And to the first also, if it
amuses you! You are become so very acute of late that I suppose you must
have your own way.”

“What is her name?” he asked.

“Now, really,” said I. “Do you think it likely she has told me?”

“I think it certain,” said he.

I could not restrain my laughter. “Well, then, do you think it likely I would
tell you?” I cried.

“Not a bit,” said he.—“But come, to our lesson!”

CHAPTER VI

THE ESCAPE

The time for our escape drew near, and the nearer it came the less we seemed
to enjoy the prospect. There is but one side on which this Castle can be left
either with dignity or safety; but as there is the main gate and guard, and the
chief street of the upper city, it is not to be thought of by escaping prisoners. In
all other directions an abominable precipice surrounds it, down the face of
which (if anywhere at all) we must regain our liberty. By our concurrent
labours in many a dark night, working with the most anxious precautions
against noise, we had made out to pierce below the curtain about the south-
west corner, in a place they call the Devil’s Elbow. I have never met that
celebrity; nor (if the rest of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow)
have I the least desire of his acquaintance. From the heel of the masonry, the
rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste lands, scattered
suburbs of the city, and houses in the building. I had never the heart to look for
any length of time—the thought that I must make the descent in person some
dark night robbing me of breath; and, indeed, on anybody not a seaman or a
steeple-jack the mere sight of the Devil’s Elbow wrought like an emetic.

I don’t know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It was not
that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it, it would serve our

turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to fathom out; but who was to tell us
how that length compared with the way we had to go? Day after day, there
would be always some of us stolen out to the Devil’s Elbow and making
estimates of the descent, whether by a bare guess or the dropping of stones. A
private of pioneers remembered the formula for that—or else remembered part
of it and obligingly invented the remainder. I had never any real confidence in
that formula; and even had we got it from a book, there were difficulties in the
way of the application that might have daunted Archimedes. We durst not drop
any considerable pebble lest the sentinels should hear, and those that we
dropped we could not hear ourselves. We had never a watch—or none that had
a second-hand; and though every one of us could guess a second to a nicety, all
somehow guessed it differently. In short, if any two set forth upon this
enterprise, they invariably returned with two opinions and often with a black
eye in the bargain. I looked on upon these proceedings, although not without
laughter, yet with impatience and disgust. I am one that cannot bear to see
things botched or gone upon with ignorance; and the thought that some poor
devil was to hazard his bones upon such premises revolted me. Had I guessed
the name of that unhappy first adventurer, my sentiments might have been
livelier still.

The designation of this personage was indeed all that remained for us to do;
and even in that we had advanced so far that the lot had fallen on Shed B. It
had been determined to mingle the bitter and the sweet; and whoever went
down first, the whole of his shed-mates were to follow next in order. This
caused a good deal of joy in Shed B, and would have caused more if it had not
still remained to choose our pioneer. In view of the ambiguity in which we lay
as to the length of the rope and the height of the precipice—and that this
gentleman was to climb down from fifty to seventy fathoms on a pitchy night,
on a rope entirely free, and with not so much as an infant child to steady it at
the bottom, a little backwardness was perhaps excusable. But it was, in our
case, more than a little. The truth is, we were all womanish fellows about a

height; and I have myself been put, more than once, hors de combat by a less
affair than the rock of Edinburgh Castle.

We discussed it in the dark and between the passage of the rounds; and it
was impossible for any body of men to show a less adventurous spirit. I am
sure some of us, and myself first among the number, regretted Goguelat. Some
were persuaded it was safe, and could prove the same by argument; but if they
had good reasons why some one else should make the trial, they had better still
why it should not be themselves. Others, again, condemned the whole idea as
insane; among these, as ill-luck would have it, a seaman of the fleet; who was
the most dispiriting of all. The height, he reminded us, was greater than the
tallest ship’s mast, the rope entirely free; and he as good as defied the boldest
and strongest to succeed. We were relieved from this deadlock by our sergeant-
major of dragoons.

“Comrades,” said he, “I believe I rank before you all; and for that reason, if
you really wish it, I will be the first myself. At the same time, you are to
consider what the chances are that I may prove to be the last as well. I am no
longer young—I was sixty near a month ago. Since I have been a prisoner, I
have made for myself a little bedaine. My arms are all gone to fat. And you
must promise not to blame me, if I fall and play the devil with the whole
thing.”

“We cannot hear of such a thing!” said I. “M. Laclas is the oldest man here;
and, as such, he should be the very last to offer. It is plain we must draw lots.”

“No,” said M. Laclas; “you put something else in my head! There is one
here who owes a pretty candle to the others, for they have kept his secret.
Besides, the rest of us are only rabble; and he is another affair altogether. Let
Champdivers—let the noble go the first.”

I confess there was a notable pause before the noble in question got his
voice. But there was no room for choice. I had been so ill-advised, when I first
joined the regiment, as to take ground on my nobility. I had been often rallied

on the matter in the ranks, and had passed under the by-names of Monseigneur
and the Marquis. It was now needful I should justify myself and take a fair
revenge.

Any little hesitation I may have felt passed entirely unnoticed, from the
lucky incident of a round happening at that moment to go by. And during the
interval of silence there occurred something to set my blood to the boil. There
was a private in our shed called Clausel, a man of a very ugly disposition. He
had made one of the followers of Goguelat; but whereas Goguelat had always
a kind of monstrous gaiety about him, Clausel was no less morose than he was
evil-minded. He was sometimes called the General, and sometimes by a name
too ill-mannered for repetition. As we all sat listening, this man’s hand was
laid on my shoulder, and his voice whispered in my ear: “If you don’t go, I’ll
have you hanged, Marquis!”

As soon as the round was past—“Certainly, gentlemen!” said I. “I will give
you a lead, with all the pleasure in the world. But, first of all, there is a hound
here to be punished. M. Clausel has just insulted me, and dishonoured the
French army; and I demand that he run the gauntlet of this shed.”

There was but one voice asking what he had done, and, as soon as I had told
them, but one voice agreeing to the punishment. The General was, in
consequence, extremely roughly handled, and the next day was congratulated
by all who saw him on his new decorations. It was lucky for us that he was
one of the prime movers and believers in our project of escape, or he had
certainly revenged himself by a denunciation. As for his feelings towards
myself, they appeared, by his looks, to surpass humanity; and I made up my
mind to give him a wide berth in the future.

Had I been to go down that instant, I believe I could have carried it well.
But it was already too late—the day was at hand. The rest had still to be
summoned. Nor was this the extent of my misfortune; for the next night, and
the night after, were adorned with a perfect galaxy of stars, and showed every

cat that stirred in a quarter of a mile. During this interval I have to direct your
sympathies on the Vicomte de Saint-Yves! All addressed me softly, like folk
round a sick-bed. Our Italian corporal, who had got a dozen of oysters from a
fishwife, laid them at my feet, as though I were a Pagan idol; and I have never
since been wholly at my ease in the society of shellfish. He who was the best
of our carvers brought me a snuff-box, which he had just completed, and
which, while it was yet in hand, he had often declared he would not part with
under fifteen dollars. I believe the piece was worth the money too! And yet the
voice stuck in my throat with which I must thank him. I found myself, in a
word, to be fed up like a prisoner in a camp of anthropophagi, and honoured
like the sacrificial bull. And what with these annoyances, and the risky venture
immediately ahead, I found my part a trying one to play.

It was a good deal of a relief when the third evening closed about the Castle
with volumes of sea-fog. The lights of Princes Street sometimes disappeared,
sometimes blinked across at us no brighter than the eyes of cats; and five steps
from one of the lanterns on the ramparts it was already groping dark. We made
haste to lie down. Had our gaolers been upon the watch they must have
observed our conversation to die out unusually soon. Yet I doubt if any of us
slept. Each lay in his place, tortured at once with the hope of liberty and the
fear of a hateful death. The guard call sounded; the hum of the town declined
by little and little. On all sides of us, in their different quarters, we could hear
the watchmen cry the hours along the street. Often enough, during my stay in
England, have I listened to these gruff or broken voices; or perhaps gone to my
window when I lay sleepless, and watched the old gentleman hobble by upon
the causeway with his cape and his cap, his hanger and his rattle. It was ever a
thought with me how differently that cry would re-echo in the chamber of
lovers, beside the bed of death, or in the condemned cell. I might be said to
hear it that night myself in the condemned cell! At length a fellow with a voice
like a bull’s began to roar out in the opposite thoroughfare:

“Past yin o’cloak, and a dark, haary moarnin’.”

At which we were all silently afoot.

As I stole about the battlements towards the—gallows, I was about to write
—the sergeant-major, perhaps doubtful of my resolution, kept close by me,
and occasionally proffered the most indigestible reassurances in my ear. At last
I could bear them no longer.

“Be so obliging as to let me be!” said I. “I am neither a coward nor a fool.
What do you know of whether the rope be long enough? But I shall know it in
ten minutes!”

The good old fellow laughed in his moustache, and patted me.

It was all very well to show the disposition of my temper before a friend
alone; before my assembled comrades the thing had to go handsomely. It was
then my time to come on the stage; and I hope I took it handsomely.

“Now, gentlemen,” said I, “if the rope is ready, here is the criminal!”

The tunnel was cleared, the stake driven, the rope extended. As I moved
forward to the place, many of my comrades caught me by the hand and wrung
it, an attention I could well have done without.

“Keep an eye on Clausel!” I whispered to Laclas; and with that, got down
on my elbows and knees, took the rope in both hands, and worked myself, feet
foremost, through the tunnel. When the earth failed under my feet, I thought
my heart would have stopped; and a moment after I was demeaning myself in
mid-air like a drunken jumping-jack. I have never been a model of piety, but at
this juncture prayers and a cold sweat burst from me simultaneously.

The line was knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the inexpert it
may seem as if it should have been even easy to descend. The trouble was, this
devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a
personal malignity against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a
moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel

from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous fury of
exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the face of the rock. I had no eyes
to see with; and I doubt if there was anything to see but darkness. I must
occasionally have caught a gasp of breath, but it was quite unconscious. And
the whole forces of my mind were so consumed with losing hold and getting it
again, that I could scarce have told whether I was going up or coming down.

Of a sudden I knocked against the cliff with such a thump as almost bereft
me of my sense; and, as reason twinkled back, I was amazed to find that I was
in a state of rest, that the face of the precipice here inclined outwards at an
angle which relieved me almost wholly of the burthen of my own weight, and
that one of my feet was safely planted on a ledge. I drew one of the sweetest
breaths in my experience, hugged myself against the rope, and closed my eyes
in a kind of ecstasy of relief. It occurred to me next to see how far I was
advanced on my unlucky journey, a point on which I had not a shadow of a
guess. I looked up: there was nothing above me but the blackness of the night
and the fog. I craned timidly forward and looked down. There, upon a floor of
darkness, I beheld a certain pattern of hazy lights, some of them aligned as in
thoroughfares, others standing apart as in solitary houses; and before I could
well realise it, or had in the least estimated my distance, a wave of nausea and
vertigo warned me to lie back and close my eyes. In this situation I had really
but the one wish, and that was: something else to think of! Strange to say, I got
it; a veil was torn from my mind, and I saw what a fool I was—what fools we
had all been—and that I had no business to be thus dangling between earth and
heaven by my arms. The only thing to have done was to have attached me to a
rope and lowered me, and I had never the wit to see it till that moment!

I filled my lungs, got a good hold on my rope, and once more launched
myself on the descent. As it chanced, the worst of the danger was at an end,
and I was so fortunate as to be never again exposed to any violent concussion.
Soon after I must have passed within a little distance of a bush of wallflower,
for the scent of it came over me with that impression of reality which

characterises scents in darkness. This made me a second landmark, the ledge
being my first. I began accordingly to compute intervals of time: so much to
the ledge, so much again to the wallflower, so much more below. If I were not
at the bottom of the rock, I calculated I must be near indeed to the end of the
rope, and there was no doubt that I was not far from the end of my own
resources. I began to be light-headed and to be tempted to let go—now arguing
that I was certainly arrived within a few feet of the level and could safely risk
a fall, anon persuaded I was still close at the top and it was idle to continue
longer on the rock. In the midst of which I came to a bearing on plain ground,
and had nearly wept aloud. My hands were as good as flayed, my courage
entirely exhausted, and, what with the long strain and the sudden relief, my
limbs shook under me with more than the violence of ague, and I was glad to
cling to the rope.

But this was no time to give way. I had (by God’s single mercy) got myself
alive out of that fortress; and now I had to try to get the others, my comrades.
There was about a fathom of rope to spare; I got it by the end, and searched the
whole ground thoroughly for anything to make it fast to. In vain: the ground
was broken and stony, but there grew not there so much as a bush of furze.

“Now then,” thought I to myself, “here begins a new lesson, and I believe it
will prove richer than the first. I am not strong enough to keep this rope
extended. If I do not keep it extended the next man will be dashed against the
precipice. There is no reason why he should have my extravagant good luck. I
see no reason why he should not fall—nor any place for him to fall on but my
head.”

From where I was now standing there was occasionally visible, as the fog
lightened, a lamp in one of the barrack windows, which gave me a measure of
the height he had to fall, and the horrid force that he must strike me with. What
was yet worse, we had agreed to do without signals: every so many minutes by
Laclas’ watch another man was to be started from the battlements. Now, I had
seemed to myself to be about half-an-hour in my descent, and it seemed near

as long again that I waited, straining on the rope for my next comrade to begin.
I began to be afraid that our conspiracy was out, that my friends were all
secured, and that I should pass the remainder of the night, and be discovered in
the morning, vainly clinging to the rope’s end like a hooked fish upon an
angle. I could not refrain, at this ridiculous image, from a chuckle of laughter.
And the next moment I knew, by the jerking of the rope, that my friend had
crawled out of the tunnel, and was fairly launched on his descent. It appears it
was the sailor who had insisted on succeeding me: as soon as my continued
silence had assured him the rope was long enough, Gautier, for that was his
name, had forgot his former arguments, and shown himself so extremely
forward, that Laclas had given way. It was like the fellow, who had no harm in
him beyond an instinctive selfishness. But he was like to have paid pretty
dearly for the privilege. Do as I would, I could not keep the rope as I could
have wished it; and he ended at last by falling on me from a height of several
yards, so that we both rolled together on the ground. As soon as he could
breathe he cursed me beyond belief, wept over his finger, which he had
broken, and cursed me again. I bade him be still and think shame of himself to
be so great a cry-baby. Did he not hear the round going by above? I asked; and
who could tell but what the noise of his fall was already remarked, and the
sentinels at the very moment leaning upon the battlements to listen?

The round, however, went by, and nothing was discovered; the third man
came to the ground quite easily; the fourth was, of course, child’s play; and
before there were ten of us collected, it seemed to me that, without the least
injustice to my comrades, I might proceed to take care of myself.

I knew their plan: they had a map and an almanac, and designed for
Grangemouth, where they were to steal a ship. Suppose them to do so, I had no
idea they were qualified to manage it after it was stolen. Their whole escape,
indeed, was the most haphazard thing imaginable; only the impatience of
captives and the ignorance of private soldiers would have entertained so
misbegotten a device; and though I played the good comrade and worked with

them upon the tunnel, but for the lawyer’s message I should have let them go
without me. Well, now they were beyond my help, as they had always been
beyond my counselling; and, without word said or leave taken, I stole out of
the little crowd. It is true I would rather have waited to shake hands with
Laclas, but in the last man who had descended I thought I recognised Clausel,
and since the scene in the shed my distrust of Clausel was perfect. I believed
the man to be capable of any infamy, and events have since shown that I was
right.

CHAPTER VII

SWANSTON COTTAGE

I had two views. The first was, naturally, to get clear of Edinburgh Castle and
the town, to say nothing of my fellow-prisoners; the second to work to the
southward so long as it was night, and be near Swanston Cottage by morning.
What I should do there and then, I had no guess, and did not greatly care,
being a devotee of a couple of divinities called Chance and Circumstance.
Prepare, if possible; where it is impossible, work straight forward, and keep
your eyes open and your tongue oiled. Wit and a good exterior—there is all
life in a nutshell.

I had at first a rather chequered journey: got involved in gardens, butted into
houses, and had even once the misfortune to awake a sleeping family, the
father of which, as I suppose, menaced me from the window with a
blunderbuss. Altogether, though I had been some time gone from my
companions, I was still at no great distance, when a miserable accident put a
period to the escape. Of a sudden the night was divided by a scream. This was

followed by the sound of something falling, and that again by the report of a
musket from the Castle battlements. It was strange to hear the alarm spread
through the city. In the fortress drums were beat and a bell rung backward. On
all hands the watchmen sprang their rattles. Even in that limbo or no-man’s-
land where I was wandering, lights were made in the houses; sashes were
flung up; I could hear neighbouring families converse from window to
window, and at length I was challenged myself.

“Wha’s that?” cried a big voice.

I could see it proceeded from a big man in a big nightcap, leaning from a
one-pair window; and as I was not yet abreast of his house, I judged it was
more wise to answer. This was not the first time I had had to stake my fortunes
on the goodness of my accent in a foreign tongue; and I have always found the
moment inspiriting, as a gambler should. Pulling around me a sort of greatcoat
I had made of my blanket, to cover my sulphur-coloured livery,—“A friend!”
said I.

“What like’s all this collieshangie?” said he.

I had never heard of a collieshangie in my days, but with the racket all about
us in the city, I could have no doubt as to the man’s meaning.

“I do not know, sir, really,” said I; “but I suppose some of the prisoners will
have escaped.”

“Be damned!” says he.

“O, sir, they will be soon taken,” I replied: “it has been found in time. Good-
morning, sir!”

“Ye walk late, sir?” he added.

“O, surely not,” said I, with a laugh. “Earlyish, if you like!” which brought
me finally beyond him, highly pleased with my success.

I was now come forth on a good thoroughfare, which led (as well as I could
judge) in my direction. It brought me almost immediately through a piece of
street, whence I could hear close by the springing of a watchman’s rattle, and
where I suppose a sixth part of the windows would be open, and the people, in
all sorts of night-gear, talking with a kind of tragic gusto from one to another.
Here, again, I must run the gauntlet of a half-dozen questions, the rattle all the
while sounding nearer; but as I was not walking inordinately quick, as I spoke
like a gentleman, and the lamps were too dim to show my dress, I carried it off
once more. One person, indeed, inquired where I was off to at that hour.

I replied vaguely and cheerfully, and as I escaped at one end of this
dangerous pass I could see the watchman’s lantern entering by the other. I was
now safe on a dark country highway, out of sight of lights and out of the fear
of watchmen. And yet I had not gone above a hundred yards before a fellow
made an ugly rush at me from the roadside. I avoided him with a leap, and
stood on guard, cursing my empty hands, wondering whether I had to do with
an officer or a mere footpad, and scarce knowing which to wish. My assailant
stood a little; in the thick darkness I could see him bob and sidle as though he
were feinting at me for an advantageous onfall. Then he spoke.

“My goo’ frien’,” says he, and at the first word I pricked my ears, “my goo’
frien’, will you oblishe me with lil neshary information? Whish roa’ t’
Cramond?”

I laughed out clear and loud, stepped up to the convivialist, took him by the
shoulders, and faced him about. “My good friend,” said I, “I believe I know
what is best for you much better than yourself, and may God forgive you the
fright you have given me! There, get you gone to Edinburgh!” And I gave a
shove, which he obeyed with the passive agility of a ball, and disappeared
incontinently in the darkness down the road by which I had myself come.

Once clear of this foolish fellow, I went on again up a gradual hill,
descended on the other side through the houses of a country village, and came

at last to the bottom of the main ascent leading to the Pentlands and my
destination. I was some way up when the fog began to lighten; a little farther,
and I stepped by degrees into a clear starry night, and saw in front of me, and
quite distinct, the summits of the Pentlands, and behind, the valley of the Forth
and the city of my late captivity buried under a lake of vapour. I had but one
encounter—that of a farm-cart, which I heard, from a great way ahead of me,
creaking nearer in the night, and which passed me about the point of dawn like
a thing seen in a dream, with two silent figures in the inside nodding to the
horse’s steps. I presume they were asleep; by the shawl about her head and
shoulders, one of them should be a woman. Soon, by concurrent steps, the day
began to break and the fog to subside and roll away. The east grew luminous
and was barred with chilly colours, and the Castle on its rock, and the spires
and chimneys of the upper town, took gradual shape, and arose, like islands,
out of the receding cloud. All about me was still and sylvan; the road mounting
and winding, with nowhere a sign of any passenger, the birds chirping, I
suppose for warmth, the boughs of the trees knocking together, and the red
leaves falling in the wind.

It was broad day, but still bitter cold and the sun not up, when I came in
view of my destination. A single gable and chimney of the cottage peeped over
the shoulder of the hill; not far off, and a trifle higher on the mountain, a tall
old whitewashed farmhouse stood among the trees, beside a falling brook;
beyond were rough hills of pasture. I bethought me that shepherd folk were
early risers, and if I were once seen skulking in that neighbourhood it might
prove the ruin of my prospects; took advantage of a line of hedge, and worked
myself up in its shadow till I was come under the garden wall of my friend’s
house. The cottage was a little quaint place of many rough-cast gables and
grey roofs. It had something the air of a rambling infinitesimal cathedral, the
body of it rising in the midst, two stories high, with a steep-pitched roof, and
sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter-houses, chapels, and transepts)
one-storied and dwarfish projections. To add to this appearance, it was
grotesquely decorated with crockets and gargoyles, ravished from some

mediæval church. The place seemed hidden away, being not only concealed in
the trees of the garden, but, on the side on which I approached it, buried as
high as the eaves by the rising of the ground. About the walls of the garden
there went a line of well-grown elms and beeches, the first entirely bare, the
last still pretty well covered with red leaves, and the centre was occupied with
a thicket of laurel and holly, in which I could see arches cut and paths winding.

I was now within hail of my friends, and not much the better. The house
appeared asleep; yet if I attempted to wake any one, I had no guarantee it
might not prove either the aunt with the gold eye-glasses (whom I could only
remember with trembling), or some ass of a servant-maid who should burst out
screaming at sight of me. Higher up I could hear and see a shepherd shouting
to his dogs and striding on the rough sides of the mountain, and it was clear I
must get to cover without loss of time. No doubt the holly thickets would have
proved a very suitable retreat, but there was mounted on the wall a sort of
signboard not uncommon in the country of Great Britain, and very damping to
the adventurous: Spring Guns and Man Traps was the legend that it bore. I
have learned since that these advertisements, three times out of four, were in
the nature of Quaker guns on a disarmed battery, but I had not learned it then,
and even so, the odds would not have been good enough. For a choice, I would
a hundred times sooner be returned to Edinburgh Castle and my corner in the
bastion, than to leave my foot in a steel trap or have to digest the contents of
an automatic blunderbuss. There was but one chance left—that Ronald or
Flora might be the first to come abroad; and in order to profit by this chance, if
it occurred, I got me on the cope of the wall in the place where it was screened
by the thick branches of a beech, and sat there waiting.

As the day wore on, the sun came very pleasantly out. I had been awake all
night, I had undergone the most violent agitations of mind and body, and it is
not so much to be wondered at, as it was exceedingly unwise and foolhardy,
that I should have dropped into a doze. From this I awakened to the
characteristic sound of digging, looked down, and saw immediately below me

the back view of a gardener in a stable waistcoat. Now he would appear
steadily immersed in his business; anon, to my more immediate terror, he
would straighten his back, stretch his arms, gaze about the otherwise deserted
garden, and relish a deep pinch of snuff. It was my first thought to drop from
the wall upon the other side. A glance sufficed to show me that even the way
by which I had come was now cut off, and the field behind me already
occupied by a couple of shepherds’ assistants and a score or two of sheep. I
have named the talismans on which I habitually depend, but here was a
conjuncture in which both were wholly useless. The copestone of a wall
arrayed with broken bottles is no favourable rostrum; and I might be as
eloquent as Pitt, and as fascinating as Richelieu, and neither the gardener nor
the shepherd lads would care a halfpenny. In short, there was no escape
possible from my absurd position: there I must continue to sit until one or
other of my neighbours should raise his eyes and give the signal for my
capture.

The part of the wall on which (for my sins) I was posted could be scarce less
than twelve feet high on the inside; the leaves of the beech which made a
fashion of sheltering me were already partly fallen; and I was thus not only
perilously exposed myself, but enabled to command some part of the garden
walks and (under an evergreen arch) the front lawn and windows of the
cottage. For long nothing stirred except my friend with the spade; then I heard
the opening of a sash; and presently after saw Miss Flora appear in a morning
wrapper and come strolling hitherward between the borders, pausing and
visiting her flowers—herself as fair. There was a friend; here, immediately
beneath me, an unknown quantity—the gardener: how to communicate with
the one and not attract the notice of the other? To make a noise was out of the
question; I dared scarce to breathe. I held myself ready to make a gesture as
soon as she should look, and she looked in every possible direction but the
one. She was interested in the vilest tuft of chickweed, she gazed at the summit
of the mountain, she came even immediately below me and conversed on the
most fastidious topics with the gardener; but to the top of that wall she would

not dedicate a glance! At last she began to retrace her steps in the direction of
the cottage; whereupon, becoming quite desperate, I broke off a piece of
plaster, took a happy aim, and hit her with it in the nape of the neck. She
clapped her hand to the place, turned about, looked on all sides for an
explanation, and spying me (as indeed I was parting the branches to make it
the more easy), half uttered and half swallowed down again a cry of surprise.

The infernal gardener was erect upon the instant. “What’s your wull, miss?”
said he.

Her readiness amazed me. She had already turned and was gazing in the
opposite direction. “There’s a child among the artichokes,” she said.

“The Plagues of Egyp’! I’ll see to them!” cried the gardener truculently, and
with a hurried waddle disappeared among the evergreens.

That moment she turned, she came running towards me, her arms stretched
out, her face incarnadined for the one moment with heavenly blushes, the next
pale as death. “Monsieur de Saint-Yves!” she said.

“My dear young lady,” I said, “this is the damnedest liberty—I know it! But
what else was I to do?”

“You have escaped?” said she.

“If you call this escape,” I replied.

“But you cannot possibly stop there!” she cried.

“I know it,” said I. “And where am I to go?”

She struck her hands together. “I have it!” she exclaimed. “Come down by
the beech trunk—you must leave no footprint in the border—quickly, before
Robie can get back! I am the hen-wife here: I keep the key; you must go into
the hen-house—for the moment.”

I was by her side at once. Both cast a hasty glance at the blank windows of
the cottage and so much as was visible of the garden alleys; it seemed there
was none to observe us. She caught me by the sleeve and ran. It was no time
for compliments; hurry breathed upon our necks; and I ran along with her to
the next corner of the garden, where a wired court and a board hovel standing
in a grove of trees advertised my place of refuge. She thrust me in without a
word; the bulk of the fowls were at the same time emitted; and I found myself
the next moment locked in alone with half-a-dozen sitting hens. In the twilight
of the place all fixed their eyes on me severely, and seemed to upbraid me with
some crying impropriety. Doubtless the hen has always a puritanic appearance,
although (in its own behaviour) I could never observe it to be more particular
than its neighbours. But conceive a British hen!

CHAPTER VIII

THE HEN-HOUSE

I was half-an-hour at least in the society of these distressing bipeds, and alone
with my own reflections and necessities. I was in great pain of my flayed
hands, and had nothing to treat them with; I was hungry and thirsty, and had
nothing to eat or to drink; I was thoroughly tired, and there was no place for
me to sit. To be sure there was the floor, but nothing could be imagined less
inviting.

At the sound of approaching footsteps my good-humour was restored. The
key rattled in the lock, and Master Ronald entered, closed the door behind him,
and leaned his back to it.

“I say, you know!” he said, and shook a sullen young head.

“I know it’s a liberty,” said I.

“It’s infernally awkward: my position is infernally embarrassing,” said he.

“Well,” said I, “and what do you think of mine?”

This seemed to pose him entirely, and he remained gazing upon me with a
convincing air of youth and innocence. I could have laughed, but I was not so
inhumane.

“I am in your hands,” said I, with a little gesture. “You must do with me
what you think right.”

“Ah, yes!” he cried: “if I knew!”

“You see,” said I, “it would be different if you had received your
commission. Properly speaking, you are not yet a combatant; I have ceased to
be one; and I think it arguable that we are just in the position of one ordinary
gentleman to another, where friendship usually comes before the law. Observe,
I only say arguable. For God’s sake, don’t think I wish to dictate an opinion.
These are the sort of nasty little businesses, inseparable from war, which every
gentleman must decide for himself. If I were in your place——”

“Ay, what would you do, then?” says he.

“Upon my word, I do not know,” said I. “Hesitate, as you are doing, I
believe.”

“I will tell you,” he said. “I have a kinsman, and it is what he would think
that I am thinking. It is General Graham of Lynedoch—Sir Thomas Graham. I
scarcely know him, but I believe I admire him more than I do God.”

“I admire him a good deal myself,” said I, “and have good reason to. I have
fought with him, been beaten, and run away. Veni, victus sum, evasi.”

“What!” he cried. “You were at Barossa?”

“There and back, which many could not say,” said I. “It was a pretty affair
and a hot one, and the Spaniards behaved abominably, as they usually did in a
pitched field; the Marshal Duke of Belluno made a fool of himself, and not for
the first time; and your friend Sir Thomas had the best of it, so far as there was
any best. He is a brave and ready officer.”

“Now, then, you will understand!” said the boy. “I wish to please Sir
Thomas: what would he do?”

“Well, I can tell you a story,” said I, “a true one too, and about this very
combat of Chiclana, or Barossa as you call it. I was in the Eighth of the Line;
we lost the eagle of the First Battalion, more betoken, but it cost you dear.
Well, we had repulsed more charges than I care to count, when your 87th
Regiment came on at a foot’s pace, very slow but very steady; in front of them
a mounted officer, his hat in his hand, white-haired, and talking very quietly to
the battalions. Our Major, Vigo-Roussillon, set spurs to his horse and galloped
out to sabre him, but seeing him an old man, very handsome, and as composed
as if he were in a coffee-house, lost heart and galloped back again. Only, you
see, they had been very close together for the moment, and looked each other
in the eyes. Soon after the Major was wounded, taken prisoner, and carried
into Cadiz. One fine day they announced to him the visit of the General, Sir
Thomas Graham. ‘Well, sir,’ said the General, taking him by the hand, ‘I think
we were face to face upon the field.’ It was the white-haired officer!”

“Ah!” cried the boy; his eyes were burning.

“Well, and here is the point,” I continued. “Sir Thomas fed the Major from
his own table from that day, and served him with six covers.”

“Yes, it is a beautiful—a beautiful story,” said Ronald. “And yet somehow it
is not the same—is it?”

“I admit it freely,” said I.

The boy stood a while brooding. “Well, I take my risk of it,” he cried. “I
believe it’s treason to my sovereign—I believe there is an infamous
punishment for such a crime—and yet I’m hanged if I can give you up.”

I was as much moved as he. “I could almost beg you to do otherwise,” I
said. “I was a brute to come to you, a brute and a coward. You are a noble
enemy; you will make a noble soldier.” And with rather a happy idea of a
compliment for this warlike youth, I stood up straight and gave him the salute.

He was for a moment confused; his face flushed. “Well, well, I must be
getting you something to eat, but it will not be for six,” he added, with a smile;
“only what we can get smuggled out. There is my aunt in the road, you see,”
and he locked me in again with the indignant hens.

I always smile when I recall that young fellow; and yet, if the reader were to
smile also, I should feel ashamed. If my son shall be only like him when he
comes to that age, it will be a brave day for me and not a bad one for his
country.

At the same time I cannot pretend that I was sorry when his sister succeeded
in his place. She brought me a few crusts of bread and a jug of milk, which she
had handsomely laced with whisky after the Scottish manner.

“I am so sorry,” she said: “I dared not bring you anything more. We are so
small a family, and my aunt keeps such an eye upon the servants. I have put
some whisky in the milk—it is more wholesome so—and with eggs you will
be able to make something of a meal. How many eggs will you be wanting to
that milk? for I must be taking the others to my aunt—that is my excuse for
being here. I should think three or four. Do you know how to beat them in? or
shall I do it?”

Willing to detain her a while longer in the hen-house, I displayed my
bleeding palms; at which she cried out aloud.

“My dear Miss Flora, you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs,”
said I; “and it is no bagatelle to escape from Edinburgh Castle. One of us, I
think, was even killed.”

“And you are as white as a rag, too,” she exclaimed, “and can hardly stand!
Here is my shawl, sit down upon it here in the corner, and I will beat your
eggs. See, I have brought a fork, too; I should have been a good person to take
care of Jacobites or Covenanters in old days! You shall have more to eat this
evening; Ronald is to bring it you from town. We have money enough,
although no food that we can call our own. Ah, if Ronald and I kept house you
should not be lying in this shed! He admires you so much.”

“My dear friend,” said I, “for God’s sake do not embarrass me with more
alms. I loved to receive them from that hand, so long as they were needed; but
they are so no more, and whatever else I may lack—and I lack everything—it
is not money.” I pulled out my sheaf of notes and detached the top one: it was
written for ten pounds, and signed by that very famous individual, Abraham
Newlands. “Oblige me, as you would like me to oblige your brother if the
parts were reversed, and take this note for the expenses. I shall need not only
food, but clothes.”

“Lay it on the ground,” said she. “I must not stop my beating.”

“You are not offended?” I exclaimed.

She answered me by a look that was a reward in itself, and seemed to imply
the most heavenly offers for the future. There was in it a shadow of reproach,
and such warmth of communicative cordiality as left me speechless. I watched
her instead till her hens’ milk was ready.

“Now,” said she, “taste that.”

I did so, and swore it was nectar. She collected her eggs and crouched in
front of me to watch me eat. There was about this tall young lady at the

moment an air of motherliness delicious to behold. I am like the English
general, and to this day I still wonder at my moderation.

“What sort of clothes will you be wanting?” said she.

“The clothes of a gentleman,” said I. “Right or wrong, I think it is the part I
am best qualified to play. Mr. St. Ives (for that’s to be my name upon the
journey) I conceive as rather a theatrical figure, and his make-up should be to
match.”

“And yet there is a difficulty,” said she. “If you got coarse clothes the fit
would hardly matter. But the clothes of a fine gentleman—O, it is absolutely
necessary that these should fit! And above all, with your”—she paused a
moment—“to our ideas somewhat noticeable manners.”

“Alas for my poor manners!” said I. “But, my dear friend Flora, these little
noticeabilities are just what mankind has to suffer under. Yourself, you see,
you’re very noticeable even when you come in a crowd to visit poor prisoners
in the Castle.”

I was afraid I should frighten my good angel visitant away, and without the
smallest breath of pause went on to add a few directions as to stuffs and
colours.

She opened big eyes upon me. “O, Mr. St. Ives!” she cried—“if that is to be
your name—I do not say they would not be becoming; but for a journey, do
you think they would be wise? I am afraid”—she gave a pretty break of
laughter—“I am afraid they would be daft-like!”

“Well, and am I not daft?” I asked her.

“I do begin to think you are,” said she.

“There it is, then!” said I. “I have been long enough a figure of fun. Can you
not feel with me that perhaps the bitterest thing in this captivity has been the
clothes? Make me a captive—bind me with chains if you like—but let me be

still myself. You do not know what it is to be a walking travesty—among
foes,” I added bitterly.

“O, but you are too unjust!” she cried. “You speak as though any one ever
dreamed of laughing at you. But no one did. We were all pained to the heart.
Even my aunt—though sometimes I do think she was not quite in good taste—
you should have seen her and heard her at home! She took so much interest.
Every patch in your clothes made us sorry; it should have been a sister’s
work.”

“That is what I never had—a sister,” said I. “But since you say that I did not
make you laugh——”

“O, Mr. St. Ives! never!” she exclaimed. “Not for one moment. It was all too
sad. To see a gentleman——”

“In the clothes of a harlequin, and begging?” I suggested.

“To see a gentleman in distress, and nobly supporting it,” she said.

“And do you not understand, my fair foe,” said I, “that even if all were as
you say—even if you had thought my travesty were becoming—I should be
only the more anxious for my sake, for my country’s sake, and for the sake of
your kindness, that you should see him whom you have helped as God meant
him to be seen? that you should have something to remember him by at least
more characteristic than a misfitting sulphur-yellow suit, and half a week’s
beard?”

“You think a great deal too much of clothes,” she said. “I am not that kind of
girl.”

“And I am afraid I am that kind of a man,” said I. “But do not think of me
too harshly for that. I talked just now of something to remember by. I have
many of them myself, of these beautiful reminders, of these keepsakes, that I
cannot be parted from until I lose memory and life. Many of them are great

things, many of them are high virtues—charity, mercy, faith. But some of them
are trivial enough. Miss Flora, do you remember the day that I first saw you,
the day of the strong east wind? Miss Flora, shall I tell you what you wore?”

We had both risen to our feet, and she had her hand already on the door to
go. Perhaps this attitude emboldened me to profit by the last seconds of our
interview; and it certainly rendered her escape the more easy.

“O, you are too romantic!” she said, laughing; and with that my sun was
blown out, my enchantress had fled away, and I was again left alone in the
twilight with the lady hens.

CHAPTER IX

THREE IS COMPANY, AND FOUR NONE

The rest of the day I slept in the corner of the hen-house upon Flora’s shawl.
Nor did I awake until a light shone suddenly in my eyes, and starting up with a
gasp (for, indeed, at the moment I dreamed I was still swinging from the Castle
battlements) I found Ronald bending over me with a lantern. It appeared it was
past midnight, that I had slept about sixteen hours, and that Flora had returned
her poultry to the shed and I had heard her not. I could not but wonder if she
had stooped to look at me as I slept. The puritan hens now slept irremediably;
and being cheered with the promise of supper I wished them an ironical good-
night, and was lighted across the garden and noiselessly admitted to a bedroom
on the ground-floor of the cottage. There I found soap, water, razors—offered
me diffidently by my beardless host—and an outfit of new clothes. To be
shaved again without depending on the barber of the gaol was a source of a

delicious, if a childish joy. My hair was sadly too long, but I was none so
unwise as to make an attempt on it myself. And, indeed, I thought it did not
wholly misbecome me as it was, being by nature curly. The clothes were about
as good as I expected. The waistcoat was of toilenet, a pretty piece, the
trousers of fine kerseymere, and the coat sat extraordinarily well. Altogether,
when I beheld this changeling in the glass, I kissed my hand to him.

“My dear fellow,” said I, “have you no scent?”

“Good God, no!” cried Ronald. “What do you want with scent?”

“Capital thing on a campaign,” said I. “But I can do without.”

I was now led, with the same precautions against noise, into the little bow-
windowed dining-room of the cottage. The shutters were up, the lamp guiltily
turned low; the beautiful Flora greeted me in a whisper; and when I was set
down to table, the pair proceeded to help me with precautions that might have
seemed excessive in the Ear of Dionysius.

“She sleeps up there,” observed the boy, pointing to the ceiling; and the
knowledge that I was so imminently near to the resting-place of that gold eye-
glass touched even myself with some uneasiness.

Our excellent youth had imported from the city a meat-pie, and I was glad to
find it flanked with a decanter of really admirable wine of Oporto. While I ate,
Ronald entertained me with the news of the city, which had naturally rung all
day with our escape: troops and mounted messengers had followed each other
forth at all hours and in all directions; but according to the last intelligence no
recapture had been made. Opinion in town was very favourable to us; our
courage was applauded, and many professed regret that our ultimate chance of
escape should be so small. The man who had fallen was one Sombref, a
peasant; he was one who slept in a different part of the Castle; and I was thus
assured that the whole of my former companions had attained their liberty, and
Shed B was untenanted.

From this we wandered insensibly into other topics. It is impossible to
exaggerate the pleasure I took to be thus sitting at the same table with Flora, in
the clothes of a gentleman, at liberty and in the full possession of my spirits
and resources; of all of which I had need, because it was necessary that I
should support at the same time two opposite characters, and at once play the
cavalier and lively soldier for the eyes of Ronald, and to the ears of Flora
maintain the same profound and sentimental note that I had already sounded.
Certainly there are days when all goes well with a man; when his wit, his
digestion, his mistress are in a conspiracy to spoil him, and even the weather
smiles upon his wishes. I will only say of myself upon that evening that I
surpassed my expectations, and was privileged to delight my hosts. Little by
little they forgot their terrors and I my caution; until at last we were brought
back to earth by a catastrophe that might very easily have been foreseen, but
was not the less astonishing to us when it occurred.

I had filled all the glasses. “I have a toast to propose,” I whispered, “or
rather three, but all so inextricably interwoven that they will not bear dividing.
I wish first to drink to the health of a brave and therefore a generous enemy.
He found me disarmed, a fugitive and helpless. Like the lion, he disdained so
poor a triumph; and when he might have vindicated an easy valour, he
preferred to make a friend. I wish that we should next drink to a fairer and a
more tender foe. She found me in prison; she cheered me with a priceless
sympathy; and what she has done since, I know she has done in mercy, and I
only pray—I dare scarce hope—her mercy may prove to have been merciful.
And I wish to conjoin with these, for the first, and perhaps the last time, the
health—and I fear I may already say the memory—of one who has fought, not
always without success, against the soldiers of your nation; but who came
here, vanquished already, only to be vanquished again by the loyal hand of the
one, by the unforgettable eyes of the other.”

It is to be feared I may have lent at times a certain resonancy to my voice; it
is to be feared that Ronald, who was none the better for his own hospitality,

may have set down his glass with something of a clang. Whatever may have
been the cause, at least, I had scarce finished my compliment before we were
aware of a thump upon the ceiling overhead. It was to be thought some very
solid body had descended to the floor from the level (possibly) of a bed. I have
never seen consternation painted in more lively colours than on the faces of
my hosts. It was proposed to smuggle me forth into the garden, or to conceal
my form under a horsehair sofa which stood against the wall. For the first
expedient, as was now plain by the approaching footsteps, there was no longer
time; from the second I recoiled with indignation.

“My dear creatures,” said I, “let us die, but do not let us be ridiculous.”

The words were still upon my lips when the door opened and my friend of
the gold eye-glass appeared, a memorable figure, on the threshold. In one hand
she bore a bedroom-candlestick; in the other, with the steadiness of a dragoon,
a horse-pistol. She was wound about in shawls which did not wholly conceal
the candid fabric of her nightdress, and surmounted by a nightcap of
portentous architecture. Thus accoutred, she made her entrance; laid down the
candle and pistol, as no longer called for; looked about the room with a silence
more eloquent than oaths; and then, in a thrilling voice—“To whom have I the
pleasure?” she said, addressing me with a ghost of a bow.

“Madam, I am charmed, I am sure,” said I. “The story is a little long; and
our meeting, however welcome, was for the moment entirely unexpected by
myself. I am sure——” but here I found I was quite sure of nothing, and tried
again. “I have the honour,” I began, and found I had the honour to be only
exceedingly confused. With that, I threw myself outright upon her mercy.
“Madam, I must be more frank with you,” I resumed. “You have already
proved your charity and compassion for the French prisoners: I am one of
these; and if my appearance be not too much changed, you may even yet
recognise in me that Oddity who had the good fortune more than once to make
you smile.”

Still gazing upon me through her glass, she uttered an uncompromising
grunt; and then, turning to her niece—“Flora,” said she, “how comes he here?”

The culprits poured out for a while an antiphony of explanations, which
died out at last in a miserable silence.

“I think at least you might have told your aunt,” she snorted.

“Madam,” I interposed, “they were about to do so. It is my fault if it be not
done already. But I made it my prayer that your slumbers might be respected,
and this necessary formula of my presentation should be delayed until to-
morrow in the morning.”

The old lady regarded me with undissembled incredulity, to which I was
able to find no better repartee than a profound and I trust graceful reverence.

“French prisoners are very well in their place,” she said, “but I cannot see
that their place is in my private dining-room.”

“Madam,” said I, “I hope it may be said without offence, but (except the
Castle of Edinburgh) I cannot think upon the spot from which I would so
readily be absent.”

At this, to my relief, I thought I could perceive a vestige of a smile to steal
upon that iron countenance and to be bitten immediately in.

“And if it is a fair question, what do they call ye?” she asked.

“At your service, the Vicomte Anne de Saint-Yves,” said I.

“Mosha the Viscount,” said she, “I am afraid you do us plain people a great
deal too much honour.”

“My dear lady,” said I, “let us be serious for a moment. What was I to do?
Where was I to go? And how can you be angry with these benevolent children
who took pity on one so unfortunate as myself? Your humble servant is no
such terrific adventurer that you should come out against him with horse-pistol

and”—smiling—“bedroom-candlesticks. It is but a young gentleman in
extreme distress, hunted upon every side, and asking no more than to escape
from his pursuers. I know your character, I read it in your face”—the heart
trembled in my body as I said these daring words. “There are unhappy English
prisoners in France at this day, perhaps at this hour. Perhaps at this hour they
kneel as I do; they take the hand of her that might conceal and assist them;
they press it to their lips as I do——”

“Here, here!” cried the old lady, breaking from my solicitations. “Behave
yourself before folk! Saw ever any one the match of that? And on earth, my
dears, what are we to do with him?”

“Pack him off, my dear lady,” said I: “pack off the impudent fellow double-
quick! And if it may be, and if your good heart allows it, help him a little on
the way he has to go.”

“What’s this pie?” she cried stridently. “Where is this pie from, Flora?”

No answer was vouchsafed by my unfortunate and (I may say) extinct
accomplices.

“Is that my port?” she pursued. “Hough! Will somebody give me a glass of
my port wine?”

I made haste to serve her.

She looked at me over the rim with an extraordinary expression. “I hope ye
liked it?” said she.

“It is even a magnificent wine,” said I.

“Awell, it was my father laid it down,” said she. “There were few knew
more about port wine than my father, God rest him!” She settled herself in a
chair with an alarming air of resolution. “And so there is some particular
direction that you wish to go in?” said she.

“O,” said I, following her example, “I am by no means such a vagrant as
you suppose. I have good friends, if I could get to them, for which all I want is
to be once clear of Scotland; and I have money for the road.” And I produced
my bundle.

“English bank-notes?” she said. “That’s not very handy for Scotland. It’s
been some fool of an Englishman that’s given you these, I’m thinking. How
much is it?”

“I declare to Heaven I never thought to count!” I exclaimed. “But that is
soon remedied.”

And I counted out ten notes of ten pound each, all in the name of Abraham
Newlands, and five bills of country bankers for as many guineas.

“One hundred and twenty-six pound five,” cried the old lady. “And you
carry such a sum about you, and have not so much as counted it! If you are not
a thief, you must allow you are very thief-like.”

“And yet, madam, the money is legitimately mine,” said I.

She took one of the bills and held it up. “Is there any probability, now, that
this could be traced?” she asked.

“None, I should suppose; and if it were, it would be no matter,” said I.
“With your usual penetration, you guessed right. An Englishman brought it
me. It reached me through the hands of his English solicitor, from my great-
uncle, the Comte de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, I believe the richest émigré in
London.”

“I can do no more than take your word for it,” said she.

“And I trust, madam, not less,” said I.

“Well,” said she, “at this rate the matter may be feasible. I will cash one of
these five-guinea bills, less the exchange, and give you silver and Scots notes

to bear you as far as the border. Beyond that, Mosha the Viscount, you will
have to depend upon yourself.”

I could not but express a civil hesitation as to whether the amount would
suffice, in my case, for so long a journey.

“Ay,” said she, “but you havena heard me out. For if you are not too fine a
gentleman to travel with a pair of drovers, I believe I have found the very
thing, and the Lord forgive me for a treasonable old wife! There are a couple
stopping up-by with the shepherd-man at the farm; to-morrow they will take
the road for England, probably by skreigh of day—and in my opinion you had
best be travelling with the stots,” said she.

“For Heaven’s sake do not suppose me to be so effeminate a character!” I
cried. “An old soldier of Napoleon is certainly beyond suspicion. But, dear
lady, to what end? and how is the society of these excellent gentlemen
supposed to help me?”

“My dear sir,” said she, “you do not at all understand your own
predicament, and must just leave your matters in the hands of those who do. I
dare say you have never even heard tell of the drove-roads or the drovers; and
I am certainly not going to sit up all night to explain it to you. Suffice it, that it
is me who is arranging this affair—the more shame to me!—and that is the
way ye have to go. Ronald,” she continued, “away up-by to the shepherds;
rowst them out of their beds, and make it perfectly distinct that Sim is not to
leave till he has seen me.”

Ronald was nothing loth to escape from his aunt’s neighbourhood, and left
the room and the cottage with a silent expedition that was more like flight than
mere obedience. Meanwhile the old lady turned to her niece.

“And I would like to know what we are to do with him the night!” she cried.

“Ronald and I meant to put him in the hen-house,” said the encrimsoned
Flora.

“And I can tell you he is to go to no such a place,” replied the aunt. “Hen-
house indeed! If a guest he is to be, he shall sleep in no mortal hen-house.
Your room is the most fit, I think, if he will consent to occupy it on so great a
suddenty. And as for you, Flora, you shall sleep with me.”

I could not help admiring the prudence and tact of this old dowager, and of
course it was not for me to make objections. Ere I well knew how, I was alone
with a flat candlestick, which is not the most sympathetic of companions, and
stood studying the snuff in a frame of mind between triumph and chagrin. All
had gone well with my flight; the masterful lady who had arrogated to herself
the arrangement of the details gave me every confidence; and I saw myself
already arriving at my uncle’s door. But, alas! it was another story with my
love-affair. I had seen and spoken with her alone; I had ventured boldly; I had
been not ill received; I had seen her change colour, had enjoyed the
undissembled kindness of her eyes; and now, in a moment, down comes upon
the scene that apocalyptic figure with the nightcap and the horse-pistol, and
with the very wind of her coming behold me separated from my love!
Gratitude and admiration contended in my breast with the extreme of natural
rancour. My appearance in her house at past midnight had an air (I could not
disguise it from myself) that was insolent and underhand, and could not but
minister to the worst suspicions. And the old lady had taken it well. Her
generosity was no more to be called in question than her courage, and I was
afraid that her intelligence would be found to match. Certainly, Miss Flora had
to support some shrewd looks, and certainly she had been troubled. I could see
but the one way before me; to profit by an excellent bed, to try to sleep soon,
to be stirring early, and to hope for some renewed occasion in the morning. To
have said so much and yet to say no more, to go out into the world upon so
half-hearted a parting, was more than I could accept.

It is my belief that the benevolent fiend sat up all night to balk me. She was
at my bedside with a candle long ere day, roused me, laid out for me a
damnable misfit of clothes, and bade me pack my own (which were wholly

unsuited to the journey) in a bundle. Sore grudging, I arrayed myself in a suit
of some country fabric, as delicate as sackcloth and about as becoming as a
shroud; and, on coming forth, found the dragon had prepared for me a hearty
breakfast. She took the head of the table, poured out the tea, and entertained
me as I ate with a great deal of good sense and a conspicuous lack of charm.
How often did I not regret the change!—how often compare her, and condemn
her in the comparison, with her charming niece! But if my entertainer was not
beautiful, she had certainly been busy in my interest. Already she was in
communication with my destined fellow-travellers; and the device on which
she had struck appeared entirely suitable. I was a young Englishman who had
outrun the constable; warrants were out against me in Scotland, and it had
become needful I should pass the border without loss of time, and privately.

“I have given a very good account of you,” said she, “which I hope you may
justify. I told them there was nothing against you beyond the fact that you were
put to the horn (if that is the right word) for debt.”

“I pray God you have the expression incorrectly, ma’am,” said I. “I do not
give myself out for a person easily alarmed; but you must admit there is
something barbarous and mediæval in the sound well qualified to startle a poor
foreigner.”

“It is the name of a process in Scots Law, and need alarm no honest man,”
said she. “But you are a very idle-minded young gentleman; you must still
have your joke, I see: I only hope you will have no cause to regret it.”

“I pray you not to suppose, because I speak lightly, that I do not feel
deeply,” said I. “Your kindness has quite conquered me; I lay myself at your
disposition, I beg you to believe, with real tenderness; I pray you to consider
me from henceforth as the most devoted of your friends.”

“Well, well,” she said, “here comes your devoted friend the drover. I’m
thinking he will be eager for the road; and I will not be easy myself till I see

you well off the premises, and the dishes washed, before my servant-woman
wakes. Praise God, we have gotten one that is a treasure at the sleeping!”

The morning was already beginning to be blue in the trees of the garden,
and to put to shame the candle by which I had breakfasted. The lady rose from
table, and I had no choice but to follow her example. All the time I was beating
my brains for any means by which I should be able to get a word apart with
Flora, or find the time to write her a billet. The windows had been opened
while I breakfasted, I suppose to ventilate the room from any traces of my
passage there; and, Master Ronald appearing on the front lawn, my ogre
leaned forth to address him.

“Ronald,” she said, “wasn’t that Sim that went by the wall?”

I snatched my advantage. Right at her back there was pen, ink, and paper
laid out. I wrote: “I love you”; and before I had time to write more, or so much
as to blot what I had written, I was again under the guns of the gold eye-
glasses.

“It’s time,” she began; and then, as she observed my occupation, “Umph!”
she broke off. “Ye have something to write?” she demanded.

“Some notes, madam,” said I, bowing with alacrity.

“Notes,” she said; “or a note?”

“There is doubtless some finesse of the English language that I do not
comprehend,” said I.

“I’ll contrive, however, to make my meaning very plain to ye, Mosha le
Viscount,” she continued. “I suppose you desire to be considered a
gentleman?”

“Can you doubt it, madam?” said I.

“I doubt very much, at least, whether you go the right way about it,” she
said. “You have come here to me, I cannot very well say how; I think you will
admit you owe me some thanks, if it was only for the breakfast I made ye. But
what are you to me? A waif young man, not so far to seek for looks and
manners, with some English notes in your pocket and a price upon your head. I
am a lady; I have been your hostess, with however little will; and I desire that
this random acquaintance of yours with my family will cease and determine.”

I believe I must have coloured. “Madam,” said I, “the notes are of no
importance; and your least pleasure ought certainly to be my law. You have
felt, and you have been pleased to express, a doubt of me. I tear them up.”
Which you may be sure I did thoroughly.

“There’s a good lad!” said the dragon, and immediately led the way to the
front lawn.

The brother and sister were both waiting us here, and, as well as I could
make out in the imperfect light, bore every appearance of having passed
through a rather cruel experience. Ronald seemed ashamed to so much as catch
my eye in the presence of his aunt, and was the picture of embarrassment. As
for Flora, she had scarce the time to cast me one look before the dragon took
her by the arm, and began to march across the garden in the extreme first
glimmer of the dawn without exchanging speech. Ronald and I followed in
equal silence.

There was a door in that same high wall on the top of which I had sat
perched no longer gone than yesterday morning. This the old lady set open
with a key; and on the other side we were aware of a rough-looking, thick-set
man, leaning with his arms (through which was passed a formidable staff) on a
dry-stone dyke. Him the old lady immediately addressed.

“Sim,” said she, “this is the young gentleman.”

Sim replied with an inarticulate grumble of sound, and a movement of one
arm and his head, which did duty for a salutation.

“Now, Mr. St. Ives,” said the old lady, “it’s high time for you to be taking
the road. But first of all let me give the change of your five-guinea bill. Here
are four pounds of it in British Linen notes, and the balance in small silver,
less sixpence. Some charge a shilling, I believe, but I have given you the
benefit of the doubt. See and guide it with all the sense that you possess.”

“And here, Mr. St. Ives,” said Flora, speaking for the first time, “is a plaid
which you will find quite necessary on so rough a journey. I hope you will take
it from the hands of a Scots friend,” she added, and her voice trembled.

“Genuine holly: I cut it myself,” said Ronald, and gave me as good a cudgel
as a man could wish for in a row.

The formality of these gifts, and the waiting figure of the drover, told me
loudly that I must be gone. I dropped on one knee and bade farewell to the
aunt, kissing her hand. I did the like—but with how different a passion!—to
her niece; as for the boy, I took him to my arms and embraced him with a
cordiality that seemed to strike him speechless. “Farewell!” and “Farewell!” I
said. “I shall never forget my friends. Keep me sometimes in memory.
Farewell!” With that I turned my back and began to walk away; and had scarce
done so, when I heard the door in the high wall close behind me. Of course
this was the aunt’s doing; and of course, if I know anything of human
character, she would not let me go without some tart expressions. I declare,
even if I had heard them, I should not have minded in the least, for I was quite
persuaded that, whatever admirers I might be leaving behind me in Swanston
Cottage, the aunt was not the least sincere.

CHAPTER X

THE DROVERS

It took me a little effort to come abreast of my new companion; for though he
walked with an ugly roll and no great appearance of speed, he could cover the
ground at a good rate when he wanted to. Each looked at the other: I with
natural curiosity, he with a great appearance of distaste. I have heard since that
his heart was entirely set against me; he had seen me kneel to the ladies, and
diagnosed me for a “gesterin’ eediot.”

“So, ye’re for England, are ye?” said he.

I told him yes.

“Weel, there’s waur places, I believe,” was his reply; and he relapsed into a
silence which was not broken during a quarter of an hour of steady walking.

This interval brought us to the foot of a bare green valley, which wound
upwards and backwards among the hills. A little stream came down the midst
and made a succession of clear pools, near by the lowest of which I was aware
of a drove of shaggy cattle, and a man who seemed the very counterpart of Mr.
Sim making a breakfast upon bread and cheese. This second drover (whose
name proved to be Candlish) rose on our approach.

“Here’s a mannie that’s to gang through with us,” said Sim. “It was the auld
wife Gilchrist wanted it.”

“Aweel, aweel,” said the other; and presently, remembering his manners,
and looking on me with a solemn grin, “A fine day!” says he.

I agreed with him, and asked him how he did.

“Brawly,” was the reply; and without further civilities, the pair proceeded to
get the cattle under way. This, as well as almost all the herding, was the work

of a pair of comely and intelligent dogs, directed by Sim or Candlish in little
more than monosyllables. Presently we were ascending the side of the
mountain by a rude green track, whose presence I had not hitherto observed. A
continual sound of munching and the crying of a great quantity of moor birds
accompanied our progress, which the deliberate pace and perennial appetite of
the cattle rendered wearisomely slow. In the midst my two conductors
marched in a contented silence that I could not but admire. The more I looked
at them, the more I was impressed by their absurd resemblance to each other.
They were dressed in the same coarse home-spun, carried similar sticks, were
equally begrimed about the nose with snuff, and each wound in an identical
plaid of what is called the shepherd’s tartan. In a back view they might be
described as indistinguishable; and even from the front they were much alike.
An incredible coincidence of humours augmented the impression. Thrice and
four times I attempted to pave the way for some exchange of thought,
sentiment, or—at the least of it—human words. An Ay or a Nhm was the sole
return, and the topic died on the hillside without echo. I can never deny that I
was chagrined; and when, after a little more walking, Sim turned towards me
and offered me a ram’s horn of snuff, with the question, “Do ye use it?” I
answered, with some animation, “’Faith, sir, I would use pepper to introduce a
little cordiality.” But even this sally failed to reach, or at least failed to soften,
my companions.

At this rate we came to the summit of a ridge, and saw the track descend in
front of us abruptly into a desert vale, about a league in length, and closed at
the farther end by no less barren hill-tops. Upon this point of vantage Sim
came to a halt, took off his hat, and mopped his brow.

“Weel,” he said, “here we’re at the top o’ Howden.”

“The top o’ Howden, sure eneuch,” said Candlish.

“Mr. St. Ivy, are ye dry?” said the first.

“Now, really,” said I, “is not this Satan reproving sin?”

“What ails ye, man?” said he. “I’m offerin’ ye a dram.”

“O, if it be anything to drink,” said I, “I am as dry as my neighbours.”

Whereupon Sim produced from the corner of his plaid a black bottle, and
we all drank and pledged each other. I found these gentlemen followed upon
such occasions an invariable etiquette, which you may be certain I made haste
to imitate. Each wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand, held up the
bottle in his right, remarked with emphasis, “Here’s to ye!” and swallowed as
much of the spirit as his fancy prompted. This little ceremony, which was the
nearest thing to manners I could perceive in either of my companions, was
repeated at becoming intervals, generally after an ascent. Occasionally we
shared a mouthful of ewe-milk cheese and an inglorious form of bread, which
I understood (but am far from engaging my honour on the point) to be called
“shearer’s bannock.” And that may be said to have concluded our whole active
intercourse for the first day.

I had the more occasion to remark the extraordinarily desolate nature of that
country, through which the drove-road continued, hour after hour, and even
day after day, to wind. A continual succession of insignificant shaggy hills,
divided by the course of ten thousand brooks, through which we had to wade,
or by the side of which we encamped at night; infinite perspectives of heather;
infinite quantities of moorfowl; here and there, by a stream-side, small and
pretty clumps of willows or the silver birch; here and there, the ruins of ancient
and inconsiderable fortresses—made the unchanging characters of the scene.
Occasionally, but only in the distance, we could perceive the smoke of a small
town or of an isolated farmhouse or cottage on the moors; more often, a flock
of sheep and its attendant shepherd, or a rude field of agriculture perhaps not
yet harvested. With these alleviations, we might almost be said to pass through
an unbroken desert—sure, one of the most impoverished in Europe; and when
I recalled to mind that we were yet but a few leagues from the chief city
(where the law-courts sat every day with a press of business, soldiers
garrisoned the Castle, and men of admitted parts were carrying on the practice

of letters and the investigations of science), it gave me a singular view of that
poor, barren, and yet illustrious country through which I travelled. Still more,
perhaps, did it commend the wisdom of Miss Gilchrist in sending me with
these uncouth companions and by this unfrequented path.

My itinerary is by no means clear to me; the names and distances I never
clearly knew, and have now wholly forgotten; and this is the more to be
regretted as there is no doubt that, in the course of those days, I must have
passed and camped among sites which have been rendered illustrious by the
pen of Walter Scott. Nay, more, I am of opinion that I was still more favoured
by fortune, and have actually met and spoken with that inimitable author. Our
encounter was of a tall, stoutish, elderly gentleman, a little grizzled, and of a
rugged but cheerful and engaging countenance. He sat on a hill pony, wrapped
in a plaid over his green coat, and was accompanied by a horsewoman, his
daughter, a young lady of the most charming appearance. They overtook us on
a stretch of heath, reined up as they came alongside, and accompanied us for
perhaps a quarter of an hour before they galloped off again across the hillsides
to our left. Great was my amazement to find the unconquerable Mr. Sim thaw
immediately on the accost of this strange gentleman, who hailed him with a
ready familiarity, proceeded at once to discuss with him the trade of droving
and the prices of cattle, and did not disdain to take a pinch from the inevitable
ram’s horn. Presently I was aware that the stranger’s eye was directed on
myself; and there ensued a conversation, some of which I could not help
overhearing at the time, and the rest have pieced together more or less
plausibly from the report of Sim.

“Surely that must be an amateur drover ye have gotten there?” the
gentleman seems to have asked.

Sim replied I was a young gentleman that had a reason of his own to travel
privately.

“Well, well, ye must tell me nothing of that. I am in the law, you know, and
tace is the Latin for a candle,” answered the gentleman. “But I hope it’s
nothing bad.”

Sim told him it was no more than debt.

“O Lord, if that be all!” cried the gentleman; and turning to myself, “Well,
sir,” he added, “I understand you are taking a tramp through our forest here for
the pleasure of the thing?”

“Why, yes, sir,” said I; “and I must say I am very well entertained.”

“I envy you,” said he. “I have jogged many miles of it myself when I was
younger. My youth lies buried about here under every heather-bush, like the
soul of the licentiate Lucius. But you should have a guide. The pleasure of this
country is much in the legends, which grow as plentiful as blackberries.” And
directing my attention to a little fragment of a broken wall no greater than a
tombstone, he told me, for an example, a story of its earlier inhabitants. Years
after it chanced that I was one day diverting myself with a Waverley Novel,
when what should I come upon but the identical narrative of my green-coated
gentleman upon the moors! In a moment the scene, the tones of his voice, his
northern accent, and the very aspect of the earth and sky and temperature of
the weather, flashed back into my mind with the reality of dreams. The
unknown in the green coat had been the Great Unknown! I had met Scott; I
had heard a story from his lips; I should have been able to write, to claim
acquaintance, to tell him that his legend still tingled in my ears. But the
discovery came too late, and the great man had already succumbed under the
load of his honours and misfortunes.

Presently, after giving us a cigar apiece, Scott bade us farewell and
disappeared with his daughter over the hills. And when I applied to Sim for
information, his answer of “The Shirra, man! A’body kens the Shirra!” told
me, unfortunately, nothing.

A more considerable adventure falls to be related. We were now near the
border. We had travelled for long upon the track beaten and browsed by a
million herds, our predecessors, and had seen no vestige of that traffic which
had created it. It was early in the morning when we at last perceived, drawing
near to the drove-road, but still at a distance of about half a league, a second
caravan, similar to but larger than our own. The liveliest excitement was at
once exhibited by both my comrades. They climbed hillocks, they studied the
approaching drove from under their hand, they consulted each other with an
appearance of alarm that seemed to me extraordinary. I had learned by this
time that their stand-off manners implied, at least, no active enmity; and I
made bold to ask them what was wrong.

“Bad yins,” was Sim’s emphatic answer.

All day the dogs were kept unsparingly on the alert, and the drove pushed
forward at a very unusual and seemingly unwelcome speed. All day Sim and
Candlish, with a more than ordinary expenditure both of snuff and of words,
continued to debate the position. It seems that they had recognised two of our
neighbours on the road—one Faa, and another by the name of Gillies. Whether
there was an old feud between them still unsettled I could never learn; but Sim
and Candlish were prepared for every degree of fraud or violence at their
hands. Candlish repeatedly congratulated himself on having left “the watch at
home with the mistress”; and Sim perpetually brandished his cudgel, and
cursed his ill-fortune that it should be sprung.

“I wilna care a damn to gie the daashed scoon’rel a fair clout wi’ it,” he said.
“The daashed thing micht come sindry in ma hand.”

“Well, gentlemen,” said I, “suppose they do come on, I think we can give a
very good account of them.” And I made my piece of holly, Ronald’s gift, the
value of which I now appreciated, sing about my head.

“Ay, man? Are ye stench?” inquired Sim, with a gleam of approval in his
wooden countenance.

The same evening, somewhat wearied with our day-long expedition, we
encamped on a little verdant mound, from the midst of which there welled a
spring of clear water scarce great enough to wash the hands in. We had made
our meal and lain down, but were not yet asleep, when a growl from one of the
collies set us on the alert. All three sat up, and on a second impulse all lay
down again, but now with our cudgels ready. A man must be an alien and an
outlaw, an old soldier and a young man in the bargain, to take adventure easily.
With no idea as to the rights of the quarrel or the probable consequences of the
encounter, I was as ready to take part with my two drovers as ever to fall in
line on the morning of a battle. Presently there leaped three men out of the
heather; we had scarce time to get to our feet before we were assailed; and in a
moment each one of us was engaged with an adversary whom the deepening
twilight scarce permitted him to see. How the battle sped in other quarters I am
in no position to describe. The rogue that fell to my share was exceedingly
agile and expert with his weapon; had and held me at a disadvantage from the
first assault; forced me to give ground continually, and at last, in mere self-
defence, to let him have the point. It struck him in the throat, and he went
down like a nine-pin and moved no more.

It seemed this was the signal for the engagement to be discontinued. The
other combatants separated at once; our foes were suffered, without
molestation, to lift up and bear away their fallen comrade; so that I perceived
this sort of war to be not wholly without laws of chivalry, and perhaps rather to
partake of the character of a tournament than of a battle à outrance. There was
no doubt, at least, that I was supposed to have pushed the affair too seriously.
Our friends the enemy removed their wounded companion with undisguised
consternation; and they were no sooner over the top of the brae than Sim and
Candlish roused up their wearied drove and set forth on a night march.

“I’m thinking Faa’s unco bad,” said the one.

“Ay,” said the other, “he lookit dooms gash.”

“He did that,” said the first.

And their weary silence fell upon them again.

Presently Sim turned to me. “Ye’re unco ready with the stick,” said he.

“Too ready, I’m afraid,” said I. “I am afraid Mr. Faa (if that be his name) has
got his gruel.”

“Weel, I wouldna wonder,” replied Sim.

“And what is likely to happen?” I inquired.

“Aweel,” said Sim, snuffing profoundly, “if I were to offer an opeenion, it
would not be conscientious. For the plain fac’ is, Mr. St. Ivy, that I div not ken.
We have had crackit heids—and rowth of them—ere now; and we have had a
broken leg, or maybe twa; and the like of that we drover bodies make a kind of
a practice like to keep among oursel’s. But a corp we have none of us ever had
to deal with, and I could set na leemit to what Gillies micht consider proper in
the affair. Forbye that, he would be in raither a hobble himsel’ if he was to
gang hame wantin’ Faa. Folk are awfu’ throng with their questions, and
parteecularly when they’re no’ wantit.”

“That’s a fac’,” said Candlish.

I considered this prospect ruefully; and then making the best of it, “Upon all
which accounts,” said I, “the best will be to get across the Border and there
separate. If you are troubled, you can very truly put the blame upon your late
companion; and if I am pursued, I must just try to keep out of the way.”

“Mr. St. Ivy,” said Sim, with something resembling enthusiasm, “no’ a word
mair! I have met in wi’ mony kinds o’ gentry ere now; I hae seen o’ them that
was the tae thing, and I hae seen o’ them that was the tither; but the wale of a
gentleman like you I have no’ sae very frequently seen the bate of.”

Our night march was accordingly pursued with unremitting diligence. The
stars paled, the east whitened, and we were still, both dogs and men, toiling
after the wearied cattle. Again and again Sim and Candlish lamented the
necessity: it was “fair ruin on the bestial,” they declared; but the thought of a
judge and a scaffold hunted them ever forward. I myself was not so much to be
pitied. All that night, and during the whole of the little that remained before us
of our conjunct journey, I enjoyed a new pleasure, the reward of my prowess,
in the now loosened tongue of Mr. Sim. Candlish was still obdurately taciturn:
it was the man’s nature; but Sim, having finally appraised and approved me,
displayed without reticence a rather garrulous habit of mind and a pretty talent
for narration. The pair were old and close companions, co-existing in these
endless moors in a brotherhood of silence such as I have heard attributed to the
trappers of the West. It seems absurd to mention love in connection with so
ugly and snuffy a couple; at least, their trust was absolute; and they entertained
a surprising admiration for each other’s qualities; Candlish exclaiming that
Sim was “grand company!” and Sim frequently assuring me in an aside that
for “a rale auld stench bitch there was na the bate of Candlish in braid
Scotland.” The two dogs appeared to be entirely included in this family
compact, and I remarked that their exploits and traits of character were
constantly and minutely observed by the two masters. Dog-stories particularly
abounded with them; and not only the dogs of the present but those of the past
contributed their quota. “But that was naething,” Sim would begin: “there was
a herd in Manar, they ca’d him Tweedie—ye’ll mind Tweedie, Can’lish?”
“Fine, that!” said Candlish. “Aweel, Tweedie had a dog—” The story I have
forgotten; I dare say it was dull, and I suspect it was not true; but indeed my
travels with the drovers had rendered me indulgent, and perhaps even
credulous, in the matter of dog-stories. Beautiful, indefatigable beings! as I
saw them at the end of a long day’s journey frisking, barking, bounding,
striking attitudes, slanting a bushy tail, manifestly playing to the spectator’s
eye, manifestly rejoicing in their grace and beauty—and turned to observe Sim
and Candlish unornamentally plodding in the rear with the plaids about their
bowed shoulders and the drop at their snuffy nose—I thought I would rather

claim kinship with the dogs than with the men! My sympathy was unreturned;
in their eyes I was a creature light as air; and they would scarce spare me the
time for a perfunctory caress or perhaps a hasty lap of the wet tongue, ere they
were back again in sedulous attendance on those dingy deities, their masters—
and their masters, as like as not, damning their stupidity.

Altogether the last hours of our tramp were infinitely the most agreeable to
me, and I believe to all of us; and by the time we came to separate there had
grown up a certain familiarity and mutual esteem that made the parting harder.
It took place about four of the afternoon on a bare hillside from which I could
see the ribbon of the great north road, henceforth to be my conductor. I asked
what was to pay.

“Naething,” replied Sim.

“What in the name of folly is this?” I exclaimed. “You have led me, you
have fed me, you have filled me full of whisky, and now you will take
nothing!”

“Ye see we indentit for that,” replied Sim.

“Indented?” I repeated; “what does the man mean?”

“Mr. St. Ivy,” said Sim, “this is a maitter entirely between Candlish and me
and the auld wife Gilchrist. You had naething to say to it; weel, ye can have
naething to do with it, then.”

“My good man,” said I, “I can allow myself to be placed in no such
ridiculous position. Mrs. Gilchrist is nothing to me, and I refuse to be her
debtor.”

“I dinna exac’ly see what way ye’re gaun to help it,” observed my drover.

“By paying you here and now,” said I.

“There’s aye twa to a bargain, Mr. St. Ivy,” said he.

“You mean that you will not take it?” said I.

“There or thereabout,” said he. “Forbye that it would set ye a heap better to
keep your siller for them you awe it to. Ye’re young, Mr. St. Ivy, and
thoughtless; but it’s my belief that, wi’ care and circumspection, ye may yet do
credit to yoursel’. But just you bear this in mind: that him that awes siller
should never gie siller.”

Well, what was there to say? I accepted his rebuke, and, bidding the pair
farewell, set off alone upon my southward way.

“Mr. St. Ivy,” was the last word of Sim, “I was never muckle ta’en up in
Englishry; but I think that I really ought to say that ye seem to me to have the
makings of quite a decent lad.”

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT NORTH ROAD

It chanced that as I went down the hill these last words of my friend the drover
echoed not unfruitfully in my head. I had never told these men the least
particulars as to my race or fortune, as it was a part, and the best part, of their
civility to ask no questions: yet they had dubbed me without hesitation
English. Some strangeness in the accent they had doubtless thus explained.
And it occurred to me, that if I could pass in Scotland for an Englishman, I
might be able to reverse the process and pass in England for a Scot. I thought,
if I was pushed to it, I could make a struggle to imitate the brogue; after my
experience with Candlish and Sim, I had a rich provision of outlandish words
at my command; and I felt I could tell the tale of Tweedie’s dog so as to

deceive a native. At the same time, I was afraid my name of St. Ives was
scarcely suitable; till I remembered there was a town so called in the province
of Cornwall, thought I might yet be glad to claim it for my place of origin, and
decided for a Cornish family and a Scots education. For a trade, as I was
equally ignorant of all, and as the most innocent might at any moment be the
means of my exposure, it was best to pretend to none. And I dubbed myself a
young gentleman of a sufficient fortune and an idle, curious habit of mind,
rambling the country at my own charges, in quest of health, information, and
merry adventures.

At Newcastle, which was the first town I reached, I completed my
preparations for the part, before going to the inn, by the purchase of a
knapsack and a pair of leathern gaiters. My plaid I continued to wear from
sentiment. It was warm, useful to sleep in if I were again benighted, and I had
discovered it to be not unbecoming for a man of gallant carriage. Thus
equipped, I supported my character of the light-hearted pedestrian not amiss.
Surprise was indeed expressed that I should have selected such a season of the
year; but I pleaded some delays of business, and smilingly claimed to be an
eccentric. The devil was in it, I would say, if any season of the year was not
good enough for me; I was not made of sugar, I was no mollycoddle to be
afraid of an ill-aired bed or a sprinkle of snow; and I would knock upon the
table with my fist and call for t’other bottle, like the noisy and free-hearted
young gentleman I was. It was my policy (if I may so express myself) to talk
much and say little. At the inn-tables, the country, the state of the roads, the
business interest of those who sat down with me, and the course of public
events, afforded me a considerable field in which I might discourse at large
and still communicate no information about myself. There was no one with
less air of reticence; I plunged into my company up to the neck; and I had a
long cock-and-bull story of an aunt of mine which must have convinced the
most suspicious of my innocence. “What!” they would have said, “that young
ass to be concealing anything! Why, he has deafened me with an aunt of his
until my head aches. He only wants you should give him a line, and he would

tell you his whole descent from Adam downward, and his whole private
fortune to the last shilling.” A responsible solid fellow was even so much
moved by pity for my inexperience as to give me a word or two of good
advice: that I was but a young man after all—I had at this time a deceptive air
of youth that made me easily pass for one-and-twenty, and was, in the
circumstances, worth a fortune—that the company at inns was very mingled,
that I should do well to be more careful, and the like; to all which I made
answer that I meant no harm myself and expected none from others, or the
devil was in it. “You are one of those d——d prudent fellows that I could
never abide with,” said I. “You are the kind of man that has a long head. That’s
all the world, my dear sir: the long heads and the short horns! Now, I am a
short horn.” “I doubt,” says he, “that you will not go very far without getting
sheared.” I offered to bet with him on that, and he made off, shaking his head.

But my particular delight was to enlarge on politics and the war. None
damned the French like me; none was more bitter against the Americans. And
when the north-bound mail arrived, crowned with holly, and the coachman and
guard hoarse with shouting victory, I went even so far as to entertain the
company to a bowl of punch, which I compounded myself with no illiberal
hand, and doled out to such sentiments as the following:—

“Our glorious victory on the Nivelle!” “Lord Wellington, God bless him!
and may victory ever attend upon his arms!” and, “Soult, poor devil! and may
he catch it again to the same tune!”

Never was oratory more applauded to the echo—never any one was more of
the popular man than I. I promise you, we made a night of it. Some of the
company supported each other, with the assistance of boots, to their respective
bed-chambers, while the rest slept on the field of glory where we had left
them; and at the breakfast-table the next morning there was an extraordinary
assemblage of red eyes and shaking fists. I observed patriotism to burn much
lower by daylight. Let no one blame me for insensibility to the reverses of
France! God knows how my heart raged. How I longed to fall on that herd of

swine and knock their heads together in the moment of their revelry! But you
are to consider my own situation and its necessities; also a certain
lightheartedness, eminently Gallic, which forms a leading trait in my character,
and leads me to throw myself into new circumstances with the spirit of a
schoolboy. It is possible that I sometimes allow this impish humour to carry
me further than good taste approves: and I was certainly punished for it once.

This was in the episcopal city of Durham. We sat down, a considerable
company, to dinner, most of us fine old vatted English tories of that class
which is often so enthusiastic as to be inarticulate. I took and held the lead
from the beginning; and, the talk having turned on the French in the Peninsula,
I gave them authentic details (on the authority of a cousin of mine, an ensign)
of certain cannibal orgies in Galicia, in which no less a person than General
Caffarelli had taken a part. I always disliked that commander, who once
ordered me under arrest for insubordination; and it is possible that a spice of
vengeance added to the rigour of my picture. I have forgotten the details; no
doubt they were high-coloured. No doubt I rejoiced to fool these jolter-heads;
and no doubt the sense of security that I drank from their dull, gasping faces
encouraged me to proceed extremely far. And for my sins, there was one silent
little man at table who took my story at the true value. It was from no sense of
humour, to which he was quite dead. It was from no particular intelligence, for
he had not any. The bond of sympathy, of all things in the world, had rendered
him clairvoyant.

Dinner was no sooner done than I strolled forth into the streets with some
design of viewing the cathedral; and the little man was silently at my heels. A
few doors from the inn, in a dark place of the street, I was aware of a touch on
my arm, turned suddenly, and found him looking up at me with eyes
pathetically bright.

“I beg your pardon, sir; but that story of yours was particularly rich. He—
he! Particularly racy,” said he. “I tell you, sir, I took you wholly! I smoked
you! I believe you and I, sir, if we had a chance to talk, would find we had a

good many opinions in common. Here is the ’Blue Bell,’ a very comfortable
place. They draw good ale, sir. Would you be so condescending as to share a
pot with me?”

There was something so ambiguous and secret in the little man’s perpetual
signalling, that I confess my curiosity was much aroused. Blaming myself,
even as I did so, for the indiscretion, I embraced his proposal, and we were
soon face to face over a tankard of mulled ale. He lowered his voice to the
least attenuation of a whisper.

“Here, sir,” said he, “is to the Great Man. I think you take me? No?” He
leaned forward till our noses touched. “Here is to the Emperor!” said he.

I was extremely embarrassed, and, in spite of the creature’s innocent
appearance, more than half alarmed. I thought him too ingenuous, and, indeed,
too daring for a spy. Yet if he were honest he must be a man of extraordinary
indiscretion, and therefore very unfit to be encouraged by an escaped prisoner.
I took a half course, accordingly—accepted his toast in silence, and drank it
without enthusiasm.

He proceeded to abound in the praises of Napoleon, such as I had never
heard in France, or at least only on the lips of officials paid to offer them.

“And this Caffarelli, now,” he pursued; “he is a splendid fellow, too, is he
not? I have not heard vastly much of him myself. No details, sir—no details!
We labour under huge difficulties here as to unbiassed information.”

“I believe I have heard the same complaint in other countries,” I could not
help remarking. “But as to Caffarelli, he is neither lame nor blind, he has two
legs, and a nose in the middle of his face. And I care as much about him as you
care for the dead body of Mr. Perceval!”

He studied me with glowing eyes.

“You cannot deceive me!” he cried. “You have served under him. You are a
Frenchman! I hold by the hand, at last, one of that noble race, the pioneers of
the glorious principles of liberty and brotherhood. Hush! No, it is all right. I
thought there had been somebody at the door. In this wretched, enslaved
country we dare not even call our souls our own. The spy and the hangman, sir
—the spy and the hangman! And yet there is a candle burning, too. The good
leaven is working, sir—working underneath. Even in this town there are a few
brave spirits who meet every Wednesday. You must stay over a day or so and
join us. We do not use this house. Another, and a quieter. They draw fine ale,
however—fair, mild ale. You will find yourself among friends, among
brothers. You will hear some very daring sentiments expressed!” he cried,
expanding his small chest. “Monarchy, Christianity—all the trappings of a
bloated past—the Free Confraternity of Durham and Tyneside deride.”

Here was a devil of a prospect for a gentleman whose whole design was to
avoid observation! The Free Confraternity had no charms for me; daring
sentiments were no part of my baggage; and I tried, instead, a little cold water.

“You seem to forget, sir, that my Emperor has reestablished Christianity,” I
observed.

“Ah, sir, but that was policy!” he exclaimed. “You do not understand
Napoleon. I have followed his whole career. I can explain his policy from first
to last. Now, for instance, in the Peninsula, on which you were so very
amusing, if you will come to a friend’s house who has a map of Spain, I can
make the whole course of the war quite clear to you, I venture to say, in half an
hour.”

This was intolerable. Of the two extremes, I found I preferred the British
tory; and, making an appointment for the morrow, I pleaded sudden headache,
escaped to the inn, packed my knapsack, and fled, about nine at night, from
this accursed neighbourhood. It was cold, starry, and clear, and the road dry,
with a touch of frost. For all that, I had not the smallest intention to make a

long stage of it; and about ten o’clock, spying on the right-hand side of the
way the lighted windows of an ale-house, I determined to bait there for the
night.

It was against my principle, which was to frequent only the dearest inns; and
the misadventure that befell me was sufficient to make me more particular in
the future. A large company was assembled in the parlour, which was heavy
with clouds of tobacco-smoke, and brightly lighted up by a roaring fire of coal.
Hard by the chimney stood a vacant chair in what I thought an enviable
situation, whether for warmth or the pleasure of society; and I was about to
take it when the nearest of the company stopped me with his hand.

“Beg thy pardon, sir,” said he; “but that there chair belongs to a British
soldier.”

A chorus of voices enforced and explained. It was one of Lord Wellington’s
heroes. He had been wounded under Rowland Hill. He was Colbourne’s right-
hand man. In short, this favoured individual appeared to have served with
every separate corps, and under every individual general in the Peninsula. Of
course I apologised. I had not known. The devil was in it if a soldier had not a
right to the best in England. And with that sentiment, which was loudly
applauded, I found a corner of a bench, and awaited, with some hopes of
entertainment, the return of the hero. He proved, of course, to be a private
soldier. I say of course, because no officer could possibly enjoy such heights of
popularity. He had been wounded before San Sebastian, and still wore his arm
in a sling. What was a great deal worse for him, every member of the company
had been plying him with drink. His honest yokel’s countenance blazed as if
with fever, his eyes were glazed and looked the two ways, and his feet
stumbled as, amidst a murmur of applause, he returned to the midst of his
admirers.

Two minutes afterwards I was again posting in the dark along the highway;
to explain which sudden movement of retreat I must trouble the reader with a

reminiscence of my services.

I lay one night with the out-pickets in Castile. We were in close touch with
the enemy; the usual orders had been issued against smoking, fires, and talk,
and both armies lay as quiet as mice, when I saw the English sentinel opposite
making a signal by holding up his musket. I repeated it, and we both crept
together in the dry bed of a stream, which made the demarcation of the armies.
It was wine he wanted, of which we had a good provision, and the English had
quite run out. He gave me the money, and I, as was the custom, left him my
firelock in pledge, and set off for the canteen. When I returned with a skin of
wine, behold, it had pleased some uneasy devil of an English officer to
withdraw the outposts! Here was a situation with a vengeance, and I looked for
nothing but ridicule in the present and punishment in the future. Doubtless our
officers winked pretty hard at this interchange of courtesies, but doubtless it
would be impossible to wink at so gross a fault, or rather so pitiable a
misadventure as mine; and you are to conceive me wandering in the plains of
Castile, benighted, charged with a wine-skin for which I had no use, and with
no knowledge whatever of the whereabouts of my musket, beyond that it was
somewhere in my Lord Wellington’s army. But my Englishman was either a
very honest fellow, or else extremely thirsty, and at last contrived to advertise
me of his new position. Now, the English sentry in Castile and the wounded
hero in the Durham public-house were one and the same person; and if he had
been a little less drunk, or myself less lively in getting away, the travels of M.
St. Ives might have come to an untimely end.

I suppose this woke me up; it stirred in me besides a spirit of opposition,
and in spite of cold, darkness, the highwaymen and the footpads, I determined
to walk right on till breakfast-time: a happy resolution, which enabled me to
observe one of those traits of manners which at once depict a country and
condemn it. It was near midnight when I saw, a great way ahead of me, the
light of many torches; presently after, the sound of wheels reached me, and the
slow tread of feet, and soon I had joined myself to the rear of a sordid, silent,

and lugubrious procession, such as we see in dreams. Close on a hundred
persons marched by torchlight in unbroken silence; and in their midst a cart,
and in the cart, on an inclined platform, the dead body of a man—the centre-
piece of this solemnity, the hero whose obsequies we were come forth at this
unusual hour to celebrate. It was but a plain, dingy old fellow of fifty or sixty,
his throat cut, his shirt turned over as though to show the wound. Blue trousers
and brown socks completed his attire, if we can talk so of the dead. He had a
horrid look of a waxwork. In the tossing of the lights he seemed to make faces
and mouths at us, to frown, and to be at times upon the point of speech. The
cart, with this shabby and tragic freight, and surrounded by its silent escort and
bright torches, continued for some distance to creak along the high-road, and I
to follow it in amazement, which was soon exchanged for horror. At the corner
of a lane the procession stopped, and, as the torches ranged themselves along
the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a grave dug in the midst of the
thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the ditch. The cart was
backed to the margin, the body slung off the platform and dumped into the
grave with an irreverent roughness. A sharpened stake had hitherto served it
for a pillow. It was now withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and
a fellow with a heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night)
drove it home through the bosom of the corpse. The hole was filled with
quicklime, and the bystanders, as if relieved of some oppression, broke at once
into a sound of whispered speech.

My shirt stuck to me, my heart had almost ceased beating, and I found my
tongue with difficulty.

“I beg your pardon,” I gasped to a neighbour, “what is this? what has he
done? is it allowed?”

“Why, where do you come from?” replied the man.

“I am a traveller, sir,” said I, “and a total stranger in this part of the country.
I had lost my way when I saw your torches, and came by chance on this—this

incredible scene. Who was the man?”

“A suicide,” said he. “Ay, he was a bad one was Johnny Green.”

It appeared this was a wretch who had committed many barbarous murders,
and being at last upon the point of discovery fell of his own hand. And the
nightmare at the cross-roads was the regular punishment, according to the laws
of England, for an act which the Romans honoured as a virtue! Whenever an
Englishman begins to prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it’s a defect they are
rather prone to), I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the bystanders
crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to myself in conscious
superiority—and take a thimbleful of brandy for the stomach’s sake.

I believe it must have been at my next stage, for I remember going to bed
extremely early, that I came to the model of a good old-fashioned English
inn, and was attended on by the picture of a pretty chambermaid. We had a
good many pleasant passages as she waited table or warmed my bed for me
with a devil of a brass warming-pan, fully larger than herself; and as she
was no less pert than she was pretty, she may be said to have given rather
better than she took. I cannot tell why (unless it were for the sake of her
saucy eyes), but I made her my confidante, told her I was attached to a
young lady in Scotland, and received the encouragement of her sympathy,
mingled and connected with a fair amount of rustic wit. While I slept the
down-mail stopped for supper; it chanced that one of the passengers left
behind a copy of the Edinburgh Courant, and the next morning my pretty
chambermaid set the paper before me at breakfast, with the remark that
there was some news from my lady-love. I took it eagerly, hoping to find
some further word of our escape, in which I was disappointed; and I was
about to lay it down, when my eye fell on a paragraph immediately
concerning me. Faa was in hospital, grievously sick, and warrants were out
for the arrest of Sim and Candlish. These two men had shown themselves
very loyal to me. This trouble emerging, the least I could do was to be
guided by a similar loyalty to them. Suppose my visit to my uncle crowned
with some success, and my finances re-established, I determined I should
immediately return to Edinburgh, put their case in the hands of a good
lawyer, and await events. So my mind was very lightly made up to what
proved a mighty serious matter. Candlish and Sim were all very well in
their way, and I do sincerely trust I should have been at some pains to help
them, had there been nothing else. But in truth my heart and my eyes were
set on quite another matter, and I received the news of their tribulation
almost with joy. There is never a bad wind that blows where we want to go,
and you may be sure there was nothing unwelcome in a circumstance that
carried me back to Edinburgh and Flora. From that hour I began to indulge

myself with the making of imaginary scenes and interviews, in which I
confounded the aunt, flattered Ronald, and now in the witty, now in the
sentimental manner, declared my love and received the assurance of its
return. By means of this exercise my resolution daily grew stronger, until at
last I had piled together such a mass of obstinacy as it would have taken a
cataclysm of nature to subvert.

“Yes,” said I to the chambermaid, “here is news of my lady-love indeed,
and very good news too.”

All that day, in the teeth of a keen winter wind, I hugged myself in my
plaid, and it was as though her arms were flung around me.

CHAPTER XII

I FOLLOW A COVERED CART NEARLY TO MY DESTINATION

At last I began to draw near, by reasonable stages, to the neighbourhood of
Wakefield; and the name of Mr. Burchell Fenn came to the top in my
memory. This was the gentleman (the reader may remember) who made a
trade of forwarding the escape of French prisoners. How he did so: whether
he had a signboard, Escapes forwarded, apply within; what he charged for
his services, or whether they were gratuitous and charitable, were all
matters of which I was at once ignorant and extremely curious. Thanks to
my proficiency in English, and Mr. Romaine’s bank-notes, I was getting on
swimmingly without him; but the trouble was that I could not be easy till I
had come to the bottom of these mysteries, and it was my difficulty that I

knew nothing of him beyond the name. I knew not his trade beyond that of
Forwarder of Escapes—whether he lived in town or country, whether he
were rich or poor, nor by what kind of address I was to gain his confidence.
It would have a very bad appearance to go along the highwayside asking
after a man of whom I could give so scanty an account; and I should look
like a fool, indeed, if I were to present myself at his door and find the police
in occupation! The interest of the conundrum, however, tempted me, and I
turned aside from my direct road to pass by Wakefield; kept my ears
pricked, as I went, for any mention of his name, and relied for the rest on
my good fortune. If Luck (who must certainly be feminine) favoured me as
far as to throw me in the man’s way, I should owe the lady a candle; if not, I
could very readily console myself. In this experimental humour, and with so
little to help me, it was a miracle that I should have brought my enterprise
to a good end; and there are several saints in the calendar who might be
happy to exchange with St. Ives!

I had slept that night in a good inn at Wakefield, made my breakfast by
candle-light with the passengers of an up-coach, and set off in a very ill
temper with myself and my surroundings. It was still early; the air raw and
cold; the sun low, and soon to disappear under a vast canopy of rain-clouds
that had begun to assemble in the north-west, and from that quarter invaded
the whole width of the heaven. Already the rain fell in crystal rods; already
the whole face of the country sounded with the discharge of drains and
ditches; and I looked forward to a day of downpour and the hell of wet
clothes, in which particular I am as dainty as a cat. At the corner of the road,
and by the last glint of the drowning sun, I spied a covered cart, of a kind
that I thought I had never seen before, preceding me at the foot’s pace of
jaded horses. Anything is interesting to a pedestrian that can help him to
forget the miseries of a day of rain; and I bettered my pace and gradually
overtook the vehicle.

The nearer I came the more it puzzled me. It was much such a cart as I
am told the calico-printers use, mounted on two wheels, and furnished with
a seat in front for the driver. The interior closed with a door, and was of a
bigness to contain a good load of calico, or (at a pinch and if it were
necessary) four or five persons. But, indeed, if human beings were meant to
travel there, they had my pity! They must travel in the dark, for there was
no sign of a window; and they would be shaken all the way like a phial of
doctor’s stuff, for the cart was not only ungainly to look at—it was besides
very imperfectly balanced on the one pair of wheels, and pitched
unconscionably. Altogether, if I had any glancing idea that the cart was
really a carriage, I had soon dismissed it; but I was still inquisitive as to
what it should contain, and where it had come from. Wheels and horses
were splashed with many different colours of mud, as though they had
come far and across a considerable diversity of country. The driver
continually and vainly plied his whip. It seemed to follow they had made a
long, perhaps an all-night, stage; and that the driver, at that early hour of a
little after eight in the morning, already felt himself belated. I looked for the
name of the proprietor on the shaft, and started outright. Fortune had
favoured the careless: it was Burchell Fenn!

“A wet morning, my man,” said I.

The driver, a loutish fellow, shock-headed and turnip-faced, returned not
a word to my salutation, but savagely flogged his horses. The tired animals,
who could scarce put the one foot before the other, paid no attention to his
cruelty; and I continued without effort to maintain my position alongside,
smiling to myself at the futility of his attempts, and at the same time pricked
with curiosity as to why he made them. I made no such formidable a figure
as that a man should flee when I accosted him; and, my conscience not
being entirely clear, I was more accustomed to be uneasy myself than to see

others timid. Presently he desisted and put back his whip in the holster with
the air of a man vanquished.

“So you would run away from me?” said I. “Come, come, that’s not
English.”

“Beg pardon, master; no offence meant,” he said, touching his hat.

“And none taken!” cried I. “All I desire is a little gaiety by the way.”

I understood him to say he didn’t “take with gaiety.”

“Then I will try you with something else,” said I. “O, I can be all things
to all men, like the apostle! I dare to say I have travelled with heavier
fellows than you in my time, and done famously well with them. Are you
going home?”

“Yes, I’m a-goin’ home, I am,” he said.

“A very fortunate circumstance for me!” said I. “At this rate we shall see
a good deal of each other, going the same way; and, now I come to think of
it, why should you not give me a cast? There is room beside you on the
bench.”

With a sudden snatch he carried the cart two yards into the roadway. The
horses plunged and came to a stop. “No, you don’t!” he said, menacing me
with the whip. “None o’ that with me.”

“None of what?” said I. “I asked you for a lift, but I have no idea of
taking one by force.”

“Well, I’ve got to take care of the cart and ’orses, I have,” says he. “I
don’t take up with no runagate vagabones, you see, else.”

“I ought to thank you for your touching confidence,” said I, approaching
carelessly nearer as I spoke. “But I admit the road is solitary hereabouts,
and no doubt an accident soon happens. Little fear of anything of the kind
with you! I like you for it, like your prudence, like that pastoral shyness of
disposition. But why not put it out of my power to hurt? Why not open the
door and bestow me here in the box, or whatever you please to call it?” And
I laid my hand demonstratively on the body of the cart.

He had been timorous before; but at this he seemed to lose the power of
speech a moment, and stared at me in a perfect enthusiasm of fear.

“Why not?” I continued. “The idea is good. I should be safe in there if I
were the monster Williams himself. The great thing is to have me under
lock and key. For it does lock; it is locked now,” said I, trying the door. “À
propos, what have you for a cargo? It must be precious.”

He found not a word to answer.

Rat-tat-tat, I went upon the door like a well-drilled footman. “Any one at
home?” I said, and stooped to listen.

There came out of the interior a stifled sneeze, the first of an
uncontrollable paroxysm; another followed immediately on the heels of it;
and then the driver turned with an oath, laid the lash upon the horses with
so much energy that they found their heels again, and the whole equipage
fled down the road at a gallop.

At the first sound of the sneeze I had started back like a man shot. The
next moment a great light broke on my mind, and I understood. Here was
the secret of Fenn’s trade: this was how he forwarded the escape of
prisoners, hawking them by night about the country in his covered cart.
There had been Frenchmen close to me; he who had just sneezed was my
countryman, my comrade, perhaps already my friend! I took to my heels in

pursuit. “Hold hard!” I shouted. “Stop! It’s all right! Stop!” But the driver
only turned a white face on me for a moment, and redoubled his efforts,
bending forward, plying his whip and crying to his horses; these lay
themselves down to the gallop and beat the highway with flying hoofs; and
the cart bounded after them among the ruts and fled in a halo of rain and
spattering mud. But a minute since, and it had been trundling along like a
lame cow; and now it was off as though drawn by Apollo’s coursers. There
is no telling what a man can do until you frighten him!

It was as much as I could do myself, though I ran valiantly, to maintain
my distance; and that (since I knew my countrymen so near) was become a
chief point with me. A hundred yards farther on the cart whipped out of the
high-road into a lane embowered with leafless trees, and became lost to
view. When I saw it next the driver had increased his advantage
considerably, but all danger was at an end, and the horses had again
declined into a hobbling walk. Persuaded they could not escape me, I took
my time, and recovered my breath as I followed them.

Presently the lane twisted at right angles and showed me a gate and the
beginning of a gravel sweep; and a little after, as I continued to advance, a
red-brick house about seventy years old, in a fine style of architecture, and
presenting a front of many windows to a lawn and garden. Behind, I could
see outhouses and the peaked roofs of stacks; and I judged that a manor-
house had in some way declined to be the residence of a tenant-farmer,
careless alike of appearances and substantial comfort. The marks of neglect
were visible on every side, in flower-bushes straggling beyond the borders,
in the ill-kept turf, and in the broken windows that were incongruously
patched with paper or stuffed with rags. A thicket of trees, mostly
evergreen, fenced the place round and secluded it from the eyes of prying
neighbours. As I came in view of it, on that melancholy winter’s morning,
in the deluge of the falling rain, and with the wind that now rose in

occasional gusts and hooted over the old chimneys, the cart had already
drawn up at the front-door steps, and the driver was already in earnest
discourse with Mr. Burchell Fenn. He was standing with his hands behind
his back—a man of a gross, misbegotten face and body, dewlapped like a
bull and red as a harvest moon; and in his jockey-cap, blue coat and top-
boots, he had much the air of a good, solid tenant-farmer.

The pair continued to speak as I came up the approach, but received me
at last in a sort of goggling silence. I had my hat in my hand.

“I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Burchell Fenn?” said I.

“The same, sir,” replied Mr. Fenn, taking off his jockey-cap in answer to
my civility, but with the distant look and the tardy movements of one who
continues to think of something else. “And who may you be?” he asked.

“I shall tell you afterwards,” said I. “Suffice it, in the meantime, that I
come on business.”

He seemed to digest my answer laboriously, his mouth gaping, his little
eyes never straying from my face.

“Suffer me to point out to you, sir,” I resumed, “that this is a devil of a
wet morning; and that the chimney corner, and possibly a glass of
something hot, are clearly indicated.”

Indeed, the rain was now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the house
roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident crash. The stolidity of
his face, on which the rain streamed, was far from reassuring me. On the
contrary, I was aware of a distinct qualm of apprehension, which was not at
all lessened by a view of the driver, craning from his perch to observe us
with the expression of a fascinated bird. So we stood silent, when the
prisoner again began to sneeze from the body of the cart; and at the sound,
prompt as a transformation, the driver had whipped up his horses and was

shambling off round the corner of the house, and Mr. Fenn, recovering his
wits with a gulp, had turned to the door behind him.

“Come in, come in, sir,” he said. “I beg your pardon, sir; the lock goes a
trifle hard.”

Indeed, it took him a surprising time to open the door, which was not
only locked on the outside, but the lock seemed rebellious from disuse; and
when at last he stood back and motioned me to enter before him, I was
greeted on the threshold by that peculiar and convincing sound of the rain
echoing over empty chambers. The entrance-hall, in which I now found
myself, was of a good size and good proportions; potted plants occupied the
corners; the paved floor was soiled with muddy footprints and encumbered
with straw; on a mahogany hall-table, which was the only furniture, a
candle had been stuck and suffered to burn down—plainly a long while ago,
for the gutterings were green with mould. My mind, under these new
impressions, worked with unusual vivacity. I was here shut off with Fenn
and his hireling in a deserted house, a neglected garden, and a wood of
evergreens; the most eligible theatre for a deed of darkness. There came to
me a vision of two flagstones raised in the hall-floor, and the driver putting
in the rainy afternoon over my grave; and the prospect displeased me
extremely. I felt I had carried my pleasantry as far as was safe; I must lose
no time in declaring my true character, and I was even choosing the words
in which I was to begin, when the hall-door was slammed-to behind me
with a bang, and I turned, dropping my stick as I did so, in time—and not
any more than time—to save my life.

The surprise of the onslaught and the huge weight of my assailant gave
him the advantage. He had a pistol in his right hand of a portentous size,
which it took me all my strength to keep deflected. With his left arm he
strained me to his bosom, so that I thought I must be crushed or stifled. His
mouth was open, his face crimson, and he panted aloud with hard animal

sounds. The affair was as brief as it was hot and sudden. The potations
which had swelled and bloated his carcase had already weakened the
springs of energy. One more huge effort, that came near to overpower me,
and in which the pistol happily exploded, and I felt his grasp slacken and
weakness come on his joints; his legs succumbed under his weight, and he
grovelled on his knees on the stone floor. “Spare me!” he gasped.

I had not only been abominably frightened; I was shocked besides: my
delicacy was in arms, like a lady to whom violence should have been
offered by a similar monster. I plucked myself from his horrid contact, I
snatched the pistol—even discharged, it was a formidable weapon—and
menaced him with the butt. “Spare you!” I cried, “you beast!”

His voice died in his fat inwards, but his lips still vehemently framed the
same words of supplication. My anger began to pass off, but not all my
repugnance; the picture he made revolted me, and I was impatient to be
spared the further view of it.

“Here,” said I, “stop this performance: it sickens me. I am not going to
kill you, do you hear? I have need of you.”

A look of relief, that I could almost have called beautiful, dawned on his
countenance. “Anything—anything you wish,” said he.

Anything is a big word, and his use of it brought me for a moment to a
stand. “Why, what do you mean?” I asked. “Do you mean that you will
blow the gaff on the whole business?”

He answered me “Yes” with eager asseverations.

“I know Monsieur de Saint-Yves is in it; it was through his papers we
traced you,” I said. “Do you consent to make a clean breast of the others?”

“I do—I will!” he cried. “The ’ole crew of ’em; there’s good names
among ’em. I’ll be King’s evidence.”

“So that all shall hang except yourself? You damned villain!” I broke out.
“Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker. I am a kinsman of
Monsieur de Saint-Yves—here in his interest. Upon my word, you have put
your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn! Come, stand up; don’t grovel
there! Stand up, you lump of iniquity!”

He scrambled to his feet. He was utterly unmanned, or it might have gone
hard with me yet; and I considered him hesitating, as, indeed, there was
cause. The man was a double-dyed traitor: he had tried to murder me, and I
had first baffled his endeavours and then exposed and insulted him. Was it
wise to place myself any longer at his mercy? With his help I should
doubtless travel more quickly; doubtless also far less agreeably; and there
was everything to show that it would be at a greater risk. In short, I should
have washed my hands of him on the spot, but for the temptation of the
French officers, whom I knew to be so near, and for whose society I felt so
great and natural an impatience. If I was to see anything of my countrymen,
it was clear I had first of all to make my peace with Mr. Fenn; and that was
no easy matter. To make friends with any one implies concessions on both
sides; and what could I concede? What could I say of him, but that he had
proved himself a villain and a fool, and the worse man?

“Well,” said I, “here has been rather a poor piece of business, which I
dare say you can have no pleasure in calling to mind; and, to say truth, I
would as readily forget it myself. Suppose we try. Take back your pistol,
which smells very ill; put it in your pocket or wherever you had it
concealed. There! Now let us meet for the first time.—Give you good
morning, Mr. Fenn! I hope you do very well. I come on the
recommendation of my kinsman, the Vicomte de Saint-Yves.”

“Do you mean it?” he cried. “Do you mean you will pass over our little
scrimmage?”

“Why, certainly!” said I. “It shows you are a bold fellow, who may be
trusted to forget the business when it comes to the point. There is nothing
against you in the little scrimmage, unless that your courage is greater than
your strength. You are not so young as you once were, that is all.”

“And I beg of you, sir, don’t betray me to the Viscount,” he pleaded. “I’ll
not deny but what my ’eart failed me a trifle; but it was only a word, sir,
what anybody might have said in the ’eat of the moment, and over with it.”

“Certainly,” said I. “That is quite my own opinion.”

“The way I came to be anxious about the Viscount,” he continued, “is
that I believe he might be induced to form an ’asty judgment. And the
business, in a pecuniary point of view, is all that I could ask; only trying, sir
—very trying. It’s making an old man of me before my time. You might
have observed yourself, sir, that I ’aven’t got the knees I once ’ad. The
knees and the breathing, there’s where it takes me. But I’m very sure, sir, I
address a gentleman as would be the last to make trouble between friends.”

“I am sure you do me no more than justice,” said I; “and I shall think it
quite unnecessary to dwell on any of these passing circumstances in my
report to the Vicomte.”

“Which you do favour him (if you’ll excuse me being so bold as to
mention it) exac’ly!” said he. “I should have known you anywheres. May I
offer you a pot of ’ome-brewed ale, sir? By your leave? This way, if you
please. I am ‘eartily grateful—’eartily pleased to be of any service to a
gentleman like you, sir, which is related to the Vis-count, and really a
fambly of which you might well be proud! Take care of the step, sir. You
have good news of ’is ’ealth, I trust? as well as that of Monseer the Count?”

God forgive me! the horrible fellow was still puffing and panting with the
fury of his assault, and already he had fallen into an obsequious, wheedling
familiarity like that of an old servant—already he was flattering me on my
family connections!

I followed him through the house into the stable-yard, where I observed
the driver washing the cart in a shed. He must have heard the explosion of
the pistol. He could not choose but hear it; the thing was shaped like a little
blunderbuss, charged to the mouth, and made a report like a piece of field
artillery. He had heard, he had paid no attention; and now, as we came forth
by the back door, he raised for a moment a pale and tell-tale face that was as
direct as a confession. The rascal had expected to see Fenn come forth
alone; he was waiting to be called on for that part of sexton, which I had
already allotted to him in fancy.

I need not detain the reader very long with any description of my visit to
the back-kitchen; of how we mulled our ale there, and mulled it very well;
nor of how we sat talking, Fenn like an old, faithful, affectionate dependant,
and I—well! I myself fallen into a mere admiration of so much impudence,
that transcended words, and had very soon conquered animosity. I took a
fancy to the man, he was so vast a humbug. I began to see a kind of beauty
in him, his aplomb was so majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so fat; his
villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce find it in my heart to
hold him responsible for either. He was good enough to drop into the
autobiographical; telling me how the farm, in spite of the war and the high
prices, had proved a disappointment; how there was “a sight of cold, wet
land as you come along the ’igh-road”; how the winds and rains and the
seasons had been misdirected, it seemed “o’ purpose”; how Mrs. Fenn had
died—“I lost her coming two year agone; a remarkable fine woman, my old
girl, sir; if you’ll excuse me,” he added, with a burst of humility. In short,
he gave me an opportunity of studying John Bull, as I may say, stripped

naked—his greed, his usuriousness, his hypocrisy, his perfidy of the back-
stairs, all swelled to the superlative—such as was well worth the little
disarray and fluster of our passage in the hall.

CHAPTER XIII

I MEET TWO OF MY COUNTRYMEN

As soon as I judged it safe, and that was not before Burchell Fenn had
talked himself back into his breath and a complete good-humour, I proposed
he should introduce me to the French officers, henceforth to become my
fellow-passengers. There were two of them, it appeared, and my heart beat
as I approached the door. The specimen of Perfidious Albion whom I had
just been studying gave me the stronger zest for my fellow-countrymen. I
could have embraced them; I could have wept on their necks. And all the
time I was going to a disappointment.

It was in a spacious and low room, with an outlook on the court, that I
found them bestowed. In the good days of that house the apartment had
probably served as a library, for there were traces of shelves along the
wainscot. Four or five mattresses lay on the floor in the corner, with a
frowsy heap of bedding; near by was a basin and a cube of soap; a rude
kitchen-table and some deal chairs stood together at the far end; and the
room was illuminated by no less than four windows, and warmed by a little
crazy sidelong grate, propped up with bricks in the vent of a hospitable
chimney, in which a pile of coals smoked prodigiously and gave out a few
starveling flames. An old frail white-haired officer sat in one of the chairs,

which he had drawn close to this apology for a fire. He was wrapped in a
camlet cloak, of which the collar was turned up, his knees touched the bars,
his hands were spread in the very smoke, and yet he shivered for cold. The
second—a big, florid, fine animal of a man, whose every gesture labelled
him the cock of the walk and the admiration of the ladies—had apparently
despaired of the fire, and now strode up and down, sneezing hard, bitterly
blowing his nose, and proffering a continual stream of bluster, complaint,
and barrack-room oaths.

Fenn showed me in with the brief form of introduction: “Gentlemen all,
this here’s another fare!” and was gone again at once. The old man gave me
but the one glance out of lack-lustre eyes; and even as he looked a shiver
took him as sharp as a hiccough. But the other, who represented to
admiration the picture of a Beau in a Catarrh, stared at me arrogantly.

“And who are you, sir?” he asked.

I made the military salute to my superiors.

“Champdivers, private, Eighth of the Line,” said I.

“Pretty business!” said he. “And you are going on with us? Three in a
cart, and a great trolloping private at that! And who is to pay for you, my
fine fellow?” he inquired.

“If monsieur comes to that,” I answered civilly, “who paid for him?”

“Oh, if you choose to play the wit!” said he,—and began to rail at large
upon his destiny, the weather, the cold, the danger and the expense of the
escape, and, above all, the cooking of the accursed English. It seemed to
annoy him particularly that I should have joined their party. “If you knew
what you were doing, thirty thousand millions of pigs! you would keep
yourself to yourself! The horses can’t drag the cart; the roads are all ruts
and swamps. No longer ago than last night the Colonel and I had to march

half the way—thunder of God!—half the way to the knees in mud—and I
with this infernal cold—and the danger of detection! Happily we met no
one: a desert—a real desert—like the whole abominable country! Nothing
to eat—no, sir, there is nothing to eat but raw cow and greens boiled in
water—nor to drink but Worcestershire sauce! Now I, with my catarrh, I
have no appetite; is it not so? Well, if I were in France, I should have a good
soup with a crust in it, an omelette, a fowl in rice, a partridge in cabbages—
things to tempt me, thunder of God! But here—day of God!—what a
country! And cold, too! They talk about Russia—this is all the cold I want!
And the people—look at them! What a race! Never any handsome men;
never any fine officers!”—and he looked down complacently for a moment
at his waist—“And the women—what faggots! No, that is one point clear, I
cannot stomach the English!”

There was something in this man so antipathetic to me, as sent the
mustard into my nose. I can never bear your bucks and dandies, even when
they are decent-looking and well dressed; and the Major—for that was his
rank—was the image of a flunkey in good luck. Even to be in agreement
with him, or to seem to be so, was more than I could make out to endure.

“You could scarce be expected to stomach them,” said I civilly, “after
having just digested your parole.”

He whipped round on his heel and turned on me a countenance which I
dare say he imagined to be awful; but another fit of sneezing cut him off ere
he could come the length of speech.

“I have not tried the dish myself,” I took the opportunity to add. “It is
said to be unpalatable. Did monsieur find it so?”

With surprising vivacity the Colonel woke from his lethargy. He was
between us ere another word could pass.

“Shame, gentlemen!” he said. “Is this a time for Frenchmen and fellow-
soldiers to fall out? We are in the midst of our enemies; a quarrel, a loud
word, may suffice to plunge us back into irretrievable distress. Monsieur le
Commandant, you have been gravely offended. I make it my request, I
make it my prayer—if need be, I give you my orders—that the matter shall
stand by until we come safe to France. Then, if you please, I will serve you
in any capacity.—And for you, young man, you have shown all the cruelty
and carelessness of youth. This gentleman is your superior; he is no longer
young”—at which word you are to conceive the Major’s face. “It is
admitted he has broken his parole. I know not his reason, and no more do
you. It might be patriotism in this hour of our country’s adversity, it might
be humanity, necessity; you know not what in the least, and you permit
yourself to reflect on his honour. To break parole may be a subject for pity
and not derision. I have broken mine—I, a colonel of the Empire. And why?
I have been years negotiating my exchange, and it cannot be managed;
those who have influence at the Ministry of War continually rush in before
me, and I have to wait, and my daughter at home is in a decline. I am going
to see my daughter at last, and it is my only concern lest I should have
delayed too long. She is ill, and very ill,—at death’s door. Nothing is left
me but my daughter, my Emperor, and my honour; and I give my honour,
blame me for it who dare!”

At this my heart smote me.

“For God’s sake,” I cried, “think no more of what I have said! A parole?
what is a parole against life and death and love? I ask your pardon; this
gentleman’s also. As long as I shall be with you, you shall not have cause to
complain of me again. I pray God you will find your daughter alive and
restored.”

“That is past praying for,” said the Colonel; and immediately the brief
fire died out of him, and, returning to the hearth, he relapsed into his former

abstraction.

But I was not so easy to compose. The knowledge of the poor
gentleman’s trouble, and the sight of his face, had filled me with the
bitterness of remorse; and I insisted upon shaking hands with the Major
(which he did with a very ill grace), and abounded in palinodes and
apologies.

“After all,” said I, “who am I to talk? I am in the luck to be a private
soldier; I have no parole to give or to keep; once I am over the rampart, I
am as free as air. I beg you to believe that I regret from my soul the use of
these ungenerous expressions. Allow me.... Is there no way in this damned
house to attract attention? Where is this fellow Fenn?”

I ran to one of the windows and threw it open. Fenn, who was at the
moment passing below in the court, cast up his arms like one in despair,
called to me to keep back, plunged into the house, and appeared next
moment in the doorway of the chamber.

“O, sir!” says he, “keep away from those there windows. A body might
see you from the back lane.”

“It is registered,” said I. “Henceforward I will be a mouse for precaution
and a ghost for invisibility. But in the meantime, for God’s sake, fetch us a
bottle of brandy! Your room is as damp as the bottom of a well, and these
gentlemen are perishing of cold.”

So soon as I had paid him (for everything, I found, must be paid in
advance), I turned my attention to the fire, and whether because I threw
greater energy into the business, or because the coals were now warmed and
the time ripe, I soon started a blaze that made the chimney roar again. The
shine of it, in that dark, rainy day, seemed to reanimate the Colonel like a
blink of sun. With the outburst of the flames, besides, a draught was

established, which immediately delivered us from the plague of smoke; and
by the time Fenn returned, carrying a bottle under his arm and a single
tumbler in his hand, there was already an air of gaiety in the room that did
the heart good.

I poured out some of the brandy.

“Colonel,” said I, “I am a young man and a private soldier. I have not
been long in this room, and already I have shown the petulance that belongs
to the one character and the ill manners that you may look for in the other.
Have the humanity to pass these slips over, and honour me so far as to
accept this glass.”

“My lad,” says he, waking up and blinking at me with an air of suspicion,
“are you sure you can afford it?”

I assured him I could.

“I thank you, then: I am very cold.” He took the glass out, and a little
colour came in his face. “I thank you again,” said he. “It goes to the heart.”

The Major, when I motioned him to help himself, did so with a good deal
of liberality; continued to do so for the rest of the morning, now with some
sort of apology, now with none at all; and the bottle began to look foolish
before dinner was served. It was such a meal as he had himself predicted:
beef, greens, potatoes, mustard in a teacup, and beer in a brown jug that was
all over hounds, horses, and hunters, with a fox at the far end and a gigantic
John Bull—for all the world like Fenn—sitting in the midst in a bob-wig
and smoking tobacco. The beer was a good brew, but not good enough for
the Major; he laced it with brandy—for his cold, he said; and in this
curative design the remainder of the bottle ebbed away. He called my
attention repeatedly to the circumstance; helped me pointedly to the dregs,
threw the bottle in the air and played tricks with it; and at last, having

exhausted his ingenuity, and seeing me remain quite blind to every hint, he
ordered and paid for another himself.

As for the Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke
occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be
doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind courtesy
that endeared him to me beyond expression. “Champdivers, my lad, your
health!” he would say. “The Major and I had a very arduous march last
night, and I positively thought I should have eaten nothing, but your
fortunate idea of the brandy has made quite a new man of me—quite a new
man.” And he would fall to with a great air of heartiness, cut himself a
mouthful, and, before he had swallowed it, would have forgotten his dinner,
his company, the place where he then was, and the escape he was engaged
on, and become absorbed in the vision of a sick-room and a dying girl in
France. The pathos of this continual pre-occupation, in a man so old, sick,
and over-weary, and whom I looked upon as a mere bundle of dying bones
and death-pains, put me wholly from my victuals: it seemed there was an
element of sin, a kind of rude bravado of youth, in the mere relishing of
food at the same table with this tragic father; and though I was well enough
used to the coarse, plain diet of the English, I ate scarce more than himself.
Dinner was hardly over before he succumbed to a lethargic sleep; lying on
one of the mattresses with his limbs relaxed, and his breath seemingly
suspended—the very image of dissolution.

This left the Major and myself alone at the table. You must not suppose
our tête-à-tête was long, but it was a lively period while it lasted. He drank
like a fish or an Englishman; shouted, beat the table, roared out songs,
quarrelled, made it up again, and at last tried to throw the dinner-plates
through the window, a feat of which he was at that time quite incapable. For
a party of fugitives, condemned to the most rigorous discretion, there was
never seen so noisy a carnival; and through it all the Colonel continued to

sleep like a child. Seeing the Major so well advanced, and no retreat
possible, I made a fair wind of a foul one, keeping his glass full, pushing
him with toasts; and sooner than I could have dared to hope, he became
drowsy and incoherent. With the wrong-headedness of all such sots, he
would not be persuaded to lie down upon one of the mattresses until I had
stretched myself upon another. But the comedy was soon over; soon he
slept the sleep of the just, and snored like a military music; and I might get
up again and face (as best I could) the excessive tedium of the afternoon.

I had passed the night before in a good bed; I was denied the resource of
slumber; and there was nothing open for me but to pace the apartment,
maintain the fire, and brood on my position. I compared yesterday and to-
day—the safety, comfort, jollity, open-air exercise and pleasant roadside
inns of the one, with the tedium, anxiety, and discomfort of the other. I
remembered that I was in the hands of Fenn, who could not be more false—
though he might be more vindictive—than I fancied him. I looked forward
to nights of pitching in the covered cart, and days of monotony in I knew
not what hiding-places; and my heart failed me, and I was in two minds
whether to slink off ere it was too late, and return to my solitary way of
travel. But the Colonel stood in the path. I had not seen much of him; but
already I judged him to be a man of childlike nature—with that sort of
innocence and courtesy that, I think, is only to be found in old soldiers or
old priests—and broken with years and sorrow. I could not turn my back on
his distress; could not leave him alone with the selfish trooper who snored
on the next mattress. “Champdivers, my lad, your health!” said a voice in
my ear, and stopped me—and there are few things I am more glad of in the
retrospect than that it did.

It must have been about four in the afternoon—at least the rain had taken
off, and the sun was setting with some wintry pomp—when the current of
my reflections was effectually changed by the arrival of two visitors in a

gig. They were farmers of the neighbourhood, I suppose—big, burly
fellows in greatcoats and top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they
arrived, and, before they left, inimitably drunk. They stayed long in the
kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it up; and
the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept me a kind of company. The night
fell, and the shine of the fire brightened and blinked on the panelled wall.
Our illuminated windows must have been visible not only from the back
lane of which Fenn had spoken, but from the court where the farmer’s gig
awaited them. In the far end of the firelit room lay my companions, the one
silent, the other clamorously noisy, the images of death and drunkenness.
Little wonder if I were tempted to join in the choruses below, and
sometimes could hardly refrain from laughter, and sometimes, I believe,
from tears—so unmitigated was the tedium, so cruel the suspense, of this
period.

At last, about six at night, I should fancy, the noisy minstrels appeared in
the court, headed by Fenn with a lantern, and knocking together as they
came. The visitors clambered noisily into the gig, one of them shook the
reins, and they were snatched out of sight and hearing with a suddenness
that partook of the nature of prodigy. I am well aware there is a Providence
for drunken men, that holds the reins for them and presides over their
troubles; doubtless he had his work cut out for him with this particular
gigful! Fenn rescued his toes with an ejaculation from under the departing
wheels, and turned at once with uncertain steps and devious lantern to the
far end of the court. There, through the open doors of a coach-house, the
shock-headed lad was already to be seen drawing forth the covered cart. If I
wished any private talk with our host, it must be now or never.

Accordingly I groped my way downstairs, and came to him as he looked
on at and lighted the harnessing of the horses.

“The hour approaches when we have to part,” said I; “and I shall be
obliged if you will tell your servant to drop me at the nearest point for
Dunstable. I am determined to go so far with our friends, Colonel X and
Major Y, but my business is peremptory, and it takes me to the
neighbourhood of Dunstable.”

Orders were given, to my satisfaction, with an obsequiousness that
seemed only inflamed by his potations.

CHAPTER XIV

TRAVELS OF THE COVERED CART

My companions were aroused with difficulty: the Colonel, poor old
gentleman, to a sort of permanent dream, in which you could say of him
only that he was very deaf and anxiously polite; the Major still maudlin
drunk. We had a dish of tea by the fireside, and then issued like criminals
into the scathing cold of the night. For the weather had in the meantime
changed. Upon the cessation of the rain, a strict frost had succeeded. The
moon, being young, was already near the zenith when we started, glittered
everywhere on sheets of ice, and sparkled in ten thousand icicles. A more
unpromising night for a journey it was hard to conceive. But in the course
of the afternoon the horses had been well roughed; and King (for such was
the name of the shock-headed lad) was very positive that he could drive us
without misadventure. He was as good as his word; indeed, despite a gawky
air, he was simply invaluable in his present employment, showing marked

sagacity in all that concerned the care of horses, and guiding us by one short
cut after another for days, and without a fault.

The interior of that engine of torture, the covered cart, was fitted with a
bench, on which we took our places; the door was shut: in a moment, the
night closed upon us solid and stifling; and we felt that we were being
driven carefully out of the courtyard. Careful was the word all night, and it
was an alleviation of our miseries that we did not often enjoy. In general, as
we were driven the better part of the night and day, often at a pretty quick
pace and always through a labyrinth of the most infamous country lanes and
by-roads, we were so bruised upon the bench, so dashed against the top and
sides of the cart, that we reached the end of a stage in truly pitiable case,
sometimes flung ourselves down without the formality of eating, made but
one sleep of it until the hour of departure returned, and were only properly
awakened by the first jolt of the renewed journey. There were interruptions,
at times, that we hailed as alleviations. At times the cart was bogged, once it
was upset, and we must alight and lend the driver the assistance of our
arms; at times, too (as on the occasion when I first encountered it), the
horses gave out, and we had to trail alongside in mud or frost until the first
peep of daylight, or the approach to a hamlet or a high-road, bade us
disappear like ghosts into our prison.

The main roads of England are incomparable for excellence, of a
beautiful smoothness, very ingeniously laid down, and so well kept that in
most weathers you could take your dinner off any part of them without
distaste. On them, to the note of the bugle, the mail did its sixty miles a day;
innumerable chaises whisked after the bobbing post-boys; or some young
blood would flit by in a curricle and tandem, to the vast delight and danger
of the lieges. On them the slow-pacing waggons made a music of bells, and
all day long the travellers on horseback and the travellers on foot (like
happy Mr. St. Ives so little a while before!) kept coming and going, and

baiting and gaping at each other, as though a fair were due, and they were
gathering to it from all England. No, nowhere in the world is travel so great
a pleasure as in that country. But unhappily our one need was to be secret;
and all this rapid and animated picture of the road swept quite apart from
us, as we rumbled up hill and down dale, under hedge and over stone,
among circuitous byways. Only twice did I receive, as it were, a whiff of
the highway. The first reached my ears alone. I might have been anywhere.
I only knew I was walking in the dark night and among ruts, when I heard
very far off, over the silent country that surrounded us, the guard’s horn
wailing its signal to the next post-house for a change of horses. It was like
the voice of the day heard in darkness, a voice of the world heard in prison,
the note of a cock crowing in the mid-seas—in short, I cannot tell you what
it was like, you will have to fancy for yourself—but I could have wept to
hear it. Once we were belated: the cattle could hardly crawl, the day was at
hand, it was a nipping, rigorous morning, King was lashing his horses, I
was giving an arm to the old Colonel, and the Major was coughing in our
rear. I must suppose that King was a thought careless, being nearly in
desperation about his team, and, in spite of the cold morning, breathing hot
with his exertions. We came, at last, a little before sunrise to the summit of
a hill, and saw the high-road passing at right angles through an open
country of meadows and hedgerow pollards; and not only the York mail,
speeding smoothly at the gallop of the four horses, but a post-chaise
besides, with the post-boy titupping briskly, and the traveller himself
putting his head out of the window, but whether to breathe the dawn, or the
better to observe the passage of the mail, I do not know. So that we enjoyed
for an instant a picture of free life on the road, in its most luxurious forms
of despatch and comfort. And thereafter, with a poignant feeling of contrast
in our hearts, we must mount again into our wheeled dungeon.

We came to our stages at all sorts of odd hours, and they were in all kinds
of odd places. I may say at once that my first experience was my best.

Nowhere again were we so well entertained as at Burchell Fenn’s. And this,
I suppose, was natural, and indeed inevitable, in so long and secret a
journey. The first stop, we lay six hours in a barn standing by itself in a
poor, marshy orchard, and packed with hay; to make it more attractive, we
were told it had been the scene of an abominable murder, and was now
haunted. But the day was beginning to break, and our fatigue was too
extreme for visionary terrors. The second or third, we alighted on a barren
heath about midnight, built a fire to warm us under the shelter of some
thorns, supped like beggars on bread and a piece of cold bacon, and slept
like gipsies with our feet to the fire. In the meanwhile, King was gone with
the cart, I know not where, to get a change of horses, and it was late in the
dark morning when he returned and we were able to resume our journey. In
the middle of another night we came to a stop by an ancient, whitewashed
cottage of two stories; a privet hedge surrounded it; the frosty moon shone
blankly on the upper windows; but through those of the kitchen the firelight
was seen glinting on the roof and reflected from the dishes on the wall.
Here, after much hammering on the door, King managed to arouse an old
crone from the chimney-corner chair, where she had been dozing in the
watch; and we were had in, and entertained with a dish of hot tea. This old
lady was an aunt of Burchell Fenn’s—and an unwilling partner in his
dangerous trade. Though the house stood solitary, and the hour was an
unlikely one for any passenger upon the road, King and she conversed in
whispers only. There was something dismal, something of the sick-room, in
this perpetual, guarded sibilation. The apprehensions of our hostess
insensibly communicated themselves to every one present. We ate like mice
in a cat’s ear; if one of us jingled a teaspoon, all would start; and when the
hour came to take the road again, we drew a long breath of relief, and
climbed to our places in the covered cart with a positive sense of escape.
The most of our meals, however, were taken boldly at hedge-row alehouses,
usually at untimely hours of the day, when the clients were in the field or

the farmyard at labour. I shall have to tell presently of our last experience of
the sort, and how unfortunately it miscarried; but as that was the signal for
my separation from my fellow-travellers I must first finish with them.

I had never any occasion to waver in my first judgment of the Colonel.
The old gentleman seemed to me, and still seems in the retrospect, the salt
of the earth. I had occasion to see him in the extremes of hardship, hunger,
and cold; he was dying, and he looked it; and yet I cannot remember any
hasty, harsh, or impatient word to have fallen from his lips. On the contrary,
he ever showed himself careful to please; and even if he rambled in his talk,
rambled always gently—like a humane, half-witted old hero, true to his
colours to the last. I would not dare to say how often he awoke suddenly
from a lethargy, and told us again, as though we had never heard it, the
story of how he had earned the Cross, how it had been given him by the
hand of the Emperor, and of the innocent—and, indeed, foolish—sayings of
his daughter when he returned with it on his bosom. He had another
anecdote which he was very apt to give, by way of a rebuke, when the
Major wearied us beyond endurance with dispraises of the English. This
was an account of the braves gens with whom he had been boarding. True
enough, he was a man so simple and grateful by nature, that the most
common civilities were able to touch him to the heart, and would remain
written in his memory; but from a thousand inconsiderable but conclusive
indications, I gathered that this family had really loved him, and loaded him
with kindness. They made a fire in his bedroom, which the sons and
daughters tended with their own hands; letters from France were looked for
with scarce more eagerness by himself than by these alien sympathisers;
when they came, he would read them aloud in the parlour to the assembled
family, translating as he went. The Colonel’s English was elementary; his
daughter not in the least likely to be an amusing correspondent; and, as I
conceived these scenes in the parlour, I felt sure the interest centred in the
Colonel himself, and I thought I could feel in my own heart that mixture of

the ridiculous and the pathetic, the contest of tears and laughter, which must
have shaken the bosoms of the family. Their kindness had continued till the
end. It appears they were privy to his flight; the camlet cloak had been lined
expressly for him, and he was the bearer of a letter from the daughter of the
house to his own daughter in Paris. The last evening, when the time came to
say good-night, it was tacitly known to all that they were to look upon his
face no more. He rose, pleading fatigue, and turned to the daughter, who
had been his chief ally: “You will permit me, my dear—to an old and very
unhappy soldier—and may God bless you for your goodness!” The girl
threw her arms about his neck and sobbed upon his bosom; the lady of the
house burst into tears; “et je vous le jure, le père se mouchait!” quoth the
Colonel, twisting his moustaches with a cavalry air, and at the same time
blinking the water from his eyes at the mere recollection.

It was a good thought to me that he had found these friends in captivity:
that he had started on this fatal journey from so cordial a farewell. He had
broken his parole for his daughter: that he should ever live to reach her
sick-bed, that he could continue to endure to an end the hardships, the
crushing fatigue, the savage cold, of our pilgrimage, I had early ceased to
hope. I did for him what I was able,—nursed him, kept him covered,
watched over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the rough
places of the road. “Champdivers,” he once said, “you are like a son to me
—like a son.” It is good to remember, though at the time it put me on the
rack. All was to no purpose. Fast as we were travelling towards France, he
was travelling faster still to another destination. Daily he grew weaker and
more indifferent. An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his
speech, from which it had long been banished, and grew stronger; old
words of the patois, too: Ouistreham, matrassé, and others, the sense of
which we were sometimes unable to guess. On the very last day he began
again his eternal story of the Cross and the Emperor. The Major, who was
particularly ill, or at least particularly cross, uttered some angry words of

protest. “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le commandant, mais c’est pour
monsieur,” said the Colonel; “monsieur has not yet heard the circumstance,
and is good enough to feel an interest.” Presently after, however, he began
to lose the thread of his narrative; and at last: “Qué que j’ai? Je
m’embrouille!” says he. “Suffit: s’m’a la donné, et Berthe en était bien
contente.” It struck me as the falling of the curtain or the closing of the
sepulchre doors.

Sure enough, in but a little while after, he fell into a sleep as gentle as an
infant’s, which insensibly changed into the sleep of death. I had my arm
about his body at the time and remarked nothing, unless it were that he once
stretched himself a little, so kindly the end came to that disastrous life. It
was only at our evening halt that the Major and I discovered we were
travelling alone with the poor clay. That night we stole a spade from a field
—I think near Market Bosworth—and a little farther on, in a wood of
young oak trees, and by the light of King’s lantern, we buried the old
soldier of the Empire with both prayers and tears.

We had needs invent Heaven if it had not been revealed to us; there are
some things that fall so bitterly ill on this side Time! As for the Major, I
have long since forgiven him. He broke the news to the poor Colonel’s
daughter: I am told he did it kindly; and sure, nobody could have done it
without tears! His share of purgatory will be brief; and in this world, as I
could not very well praise him, I have suppressed his name. The Colonel’s
also, for the sake of his parole. Requiescat.

CHAPTER XV

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ATTORNEY’S CLERK

I have mentioned our usual course, which was to eat in inconsiderable
wayside hostelries, known to King. It was a dangerous business: we went
daily under fire to satisfy our appetite, and put our head in the lion’s mouth
for a piece of bread. Sometimes, to minimise the risk, we would all
dismount before we came in view of the house, straggle in severally, and
give what orders we pleased, like disconnected strangers. In like manner we
departed, to find the cart at an appointed place, some half a mile beyond.
The Colonel and the Major had each a word or two of English—God help
their pronunciation! But they did well enough to order a rasher and a pot or
call a reckoning; and, to say truth, these country-folks did not give
themselves the pains, and had scarce the knowledge, to be critical.

About nine or ten at night the pains of hunger and cold drove us to an
alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire not far from Bedford itself. In the inn
kitchen was a long, lean, characteristic-looking fellow of perhaps forty,
dressed in black. He sat on a settle by the fireside, smoking a long pipe,
such as they call a yard of clay. His hat and wig were hanged upon the knob
behind him, his head as bald as a bladder of lard, and his expression very
shrewd, cantankerous and inquisitive. He seemed to value himself above his
company, to give himself the airs of a man of the world among that rustic
herd; which was often no more than his due; being, as I afterwards
discovered, an attorney’s clerk. I took upon myself the more ungrateful part
of arriving last; and by the time I entered on the scene the Major was
already served at a side-table. Some general conversation must have passed,
and I smelled danger in the air. The Major looked flustered, the attorney’s
clerk triumphant, and three or four peasants in smock-frocks (who sat about
the fire to play chorus) had let their pipes go out.

“Give you good-evening, sir!” said the attorney’s clerk to me.

“The same to you, sir,” said I.

“I think this one will do,” quoth the clerk to the yokels with a wink; and
then, as soon as I had given my order, “Pray, sir, whither are you bound?”
he added.

“Sir,” said I, “I am not one of those who speak either of their business or
their destination in houses of public entertainment.”

“A good answer,” said he, “and an excellent principle.—Sir, do you
speak French?”

“Why, no, sir,” said I. “A little Spanish, at your service.”

“But you know the French accent, perhaps?” said the clerk.

“Well do I do that!” said I. “The French accent? Why, I believe I can tell
a Frenchman in ten words.”

“Here is a puzzle for you, then!” he said. “I have no material doubt
myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward. The lack of
education, you know. I make bold to say that a man cannot walk, cannot
hear, and cannot see, without the blessings of education.”

He turned to the Major, whose food plainly stuck in his throat.

“Now, sir,” pursued the clerk, “let me have the pleasure to hear your
voice again. Where are you going, did you say?”

“Sare, I am go—ing to Lon—don,” said the Major.

I could have flung my plate at him to be such an ass, and to have so little
a gift of languages where that was the essential.

“What think ye of that?” said the clerk. “Is that French enough?”

“Good God!” cried I, leaping up like one who should suddenly perceive
an acquaintance, “is this you, Mr. Dubois? Why, who would have dreamed
of encountering you so far from home?” As I spoke, I shook hands with the
Major heartily; and turning to our tormentor, “O, sir, you may be perfectly
reassured! This is a very honest fellow, a late neighbour of mine in the City
of Carlisle.”

I thought the attorney looked put out; I little knew the man!

“But he is French,” said he, “for all that?”

“Ay, to be sure!” said I. “A Frenchman of the emigration! None of your
Buonaparte lot. I will warrant his views of politics to be as sound as your
own.”

“What is a little strange,” said the clerk quietly, “is that Mr. Dubois
should deny it.”

I got it fair in the face, and took it smiling; but the shock was rude, and in
the course of the next words I contrived to do what I have rarely done, and
make a slip in my English. I kept my liberty and life by my proficiency all
these months, and for once that I failed, it is not to be supposed that I would
make a public exhibition of the details. Enough that it was a very little error,
and one that might have passed ninety-nine times in a hundred. But my
limb of the law was as swift to pick it up as though he had been by trade a
master of languages.

“Aha!” cries he; “and you are French too! Your tongue bewrays you. Two
Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and accidentally, not
knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night, in the middle of
Bedfordshire? No, sir, that shall not pass! You are all prisoners escaping, if
you are nothing worse. Consider yourselves under arrest. I have to trouble
you for your papers.”

“Where is your warrant, if you come to that?” said I. “My papers! A
likely thing that I would show my papers on the ipse dixit of an unknown
fellow in a hedge alehouse!”

“Would you resist the law?” says he.

“Not the law, sir!” said I. “I hope I am too good a subject for that. But for
a nameless fellow with a bald head and a pair of gingham small-clothes,
why certainly! ’Tis my birthright as an Englishman. Where’s Magna Charta
else?”

“We will see about that,” says he; and then, addressing the assistants,
“Where does the constable live?”

“Lord love you, sir!” cried the landlord, “what are you thinking of? The
constable at past ten at night! Why, he’s abed and asleep, and good and
drunk two hours agone!”

“Ah that a’ be!” came in chorus from the yokels.

The attorney’s clerk was put to a stand. He could not think of force; there
was little sign of martial ardour about the landlord, and the peasants were
indifferent—they only listened, and gaped, and now scratched a head, and
now would get a light to their pipes from the embers on the hearth. On the
other hand, the Major and I put a bold front on the business and defied him,
not without some ground of law. In this state of matters he proposed I
should go along with him to one Squire Merton, a great man of the
neighbourhood, who was in the commission of the peace, the end of his
avenue but three lanes away. I told him I would not stir a foot for him if it
were to save his soul. Next he proposed I should stay all night where I was,
and the constable could see to my affair in the morning, when he was sober.
I replied I should go when and where I pleased; that we were lawful
travellers in the fear of God and the King, and I for one would suffer myself

to be stayed by nobody. At the same time, I was thinking the matter had
lasted altogether too long, and I determined to bring it to an end at once.

“See here,” said I, getting up, for till now I had remained carelessly
seated, “there’s only one way to decide a thing like this—only one way
that’s right English—and that’s man to man. Take off your coat, sir, and
these gentlemen shall see fair play.”

At this there came a look in his eye that I could not mistake. His
education had been neglected in one essential and eminently British
particular: he could not box. No more could I, you may say; but then I had
the more impudence—and I had made the proposal.

“He says I’m no Englishman, but the proof of the pudding is the eating of
it,” I continued. And here I stripped my coat and fell into the proper
attitude, which was just about all I knew of this barbarian art. “Why, sir,
you seem to me to hang back a little,” said I. “Come, I’ll meet you; I’ll give
you an appetiser—though hang me if I can understand the man that wants
any enticement to hold up his hands.” I drew a bank-note out of my fob and
tossed it to the landlord. “There are the stakes,” said I. “I’ll fight you for
first blood, since you seem to make so much work about it. If you tap my
claret first, there are five guineas for you, and I’ll go with you to any squire
you choose to mention. If I tap yours, you’ll perhaps let on that I’m the
better man, and allow me to go about my lawful business at my own time
and convenience, by God!—Is that fair, my lads?” says I, appealing to the
company.

“Ay, ay,” said the chorus of chawbacons; “he can’t say no fairer nor that,
he can’t. Take off thy coat, master!”

The limb of the law was now on the wrong side of public opinion, and,
what heartened me to go on, the position was rapidly changing in our
favour. Already the Major was paying his shot to the very indifferent

landlord, and I could see the white face of King at the backdoor, making
signals of haste.

“Oho!” quoth my enemy, “you are as full of doubles as a fox, are you
not? But I see through you; I see through and through you. You would
change the venue, would you?”

“I may be transparent, sir,” says I, “but if you’ll do me the favour to stand
up, you’ll find I can hit damn hard.”

“Which is a point, if you will observe, that I had never called in
question,” said he. “Why, you ignorant clowns,” he proceeded, addressing
the company, “can’t you see the fellow’s gulling you before your eyes?
Can’t you see that he has changed the point upon me? I say he’s a French
prisoner, and he answers that he can box! What has that to do with it? I
would not wonder but what he can dance too—they’re all dancing-masters
over there. I say, and I stick to it, that he’s a Frenchy. He says he isn’t. Well
then, let him out with his papers, if he has them! If he had, would he not
show them? If he had, would he not jump at the idea of going to Squire
Merton, a man you all know? Now, you are all plain, straightforward
Bedfordshire men, and I wouldn’t ask a better lot to appeal to. You’re not
the kind to be talked over with any French gammon, and he’s plenty of that.
But let me tell him, he can take his pigs to another market; they’ll never do
here; they’ll never go down in Bedfordshire. Why! look at the man! Look at
his feet! Has anybody got a foot in the room like that? See how he stands!
do any of you fellows stand like that? Does the landlord, there? Why, he has
Frenchman wrote all over him as big as a sign-post!”

This was all very well; and in a different scene I might even have been
gratified by his remarks; but I saw clearly, if I were to allow him to talk, he
might turn the tables on me altogether. He might not be much of a hand at
boxing; but I was much mistaken, or he had studied forensic eloquence in a

good school. In this predicament I could think of nothing more ingenious
than to burst out of the house, under the pretext of an ungovernable rage. It
was certainly not very ingenious—it was elementary, but I had no choice.

“You white-livered dog!” I broke out. “Do you dare to tell me you’re an
Englishman, and won’t fight? But I’ll stand no more of this! I leave this
place, where I’ve been insulted! Here! what’s to pay? Pay yourself!” I went
on, offering the landlord a handful of silver, “and give me back my bank-
note!”

The landlord, following his usual policy of obliging everybody, offered
no opposition to my design. The position of my adversary was now
thoroughly bad. He had lost my two companions. He was on the point of
losing me also. There was plainly no hope of arousing the company to help;
and, watching him with a corner of my eye, I saw him hesitate for a
moment. The next, he had taken down his hat and his wig, which was of
black horsehair; and I saw him draw from behind the settle a vast hooded
greatcoat and a small valise. “The devil!” thought I: “is the rascal going to
follow me?”

I was scarce clear of the inn before the limb of the law was at my heels. I
saw his face plain in the moonlight; and the most resolute purpose showed
in it, along with an unmoved composure. A chill went over me. “This is no
common adventure,” thinks I to myself. “You have got hold of a man of
character, St. Ives! A bite-hard, a bull-dog, a weasel is on your trail; and
how are you to throw him off?” Who was he? By some of his expressions I
judged he was a hanger-on of courts. But in what character had he followed
the assizes? As a simple spectator, as a lawyer’s clerk, as a criminal himself,
or—last and worst supposition—as a Bow Street “runner”?

The cart would wait for me, perhaps half a mile down our onward road,
which I was already following. And I told myself that in a few minutes’

walking, Bow Street runner or not, I should have him at my mercy. And
then reflection came to me in time. Of all things, one was out of the
question. Upon no account must this obtrusive fellow see the cart. Until I
had killed or shook him off, I was quite divorced from my companions—
alone, in the midst of England, on a frosty by-way leading whither I knew
not, with a sleuth-hound at my heels, and never a friend but the holly-stick!

We came at the same time to a crossing of lanes. The branch to the left
was overhung with trees, deeply sunken and dark. Not a ray of moonlight
penetrated its recesses; and I took it at a venture. The wretch followed my
example in silence; and for some time we crunched together over frozen
pools without a word. Then he found his voice, with a chuckle.

“This is not the way to Mr. Merton’s,” said he.

“No?” said I. “It is mine, however.”

“And therefore mine,” said he.

Again we fell silent; and we may thus have covered half a mile before the
lane, taking a sudden turn, brought us forth again into the moonshine. With
his hooded greatcoat on his back, his valise in his hand, his black wig
adjusted, and footing it on the ice with a sort of sober doggedness of
manner, my enemy was changed almost beyond recognition: changed in
everything but a certain dry, polemical, pedantic air, that spoke of a
sedentary occupation and high stools. I observed, too, that his valise was
heavy; and, putting this and that together, hit upon a plan.

“A seasonable night, sir,” said I. “What do you say to a bit of running?
The frost has me by the toes.”

“With all the pleasure in life,” says he.

His voice seemed well assured, which pleased me little. However, there
was nothing else to try, except violence, for which it would always be too
soon. I took to my heels accordingly, he after me; and for some time the
slapping of our feet on the hard road might have been heard a mile away.
He had started a pace behind me, and he finished in the same position. For
all his extra years and the weight of his valise, he had not lost a hair’s
breadth. The devil might race him for me—I had enough of it!

And, besides, to run so fast was contrary to my interests. We could not
run long without arriving somewhere. At any moment we might turn a
corner and find ourselves at the lodge-gate of some Squire Merton, in the
midst of a village whose constable was sober, or in the hands of a patrol.
There was no help for it—I must finish with him on the spot, as long as it
was possible. I looked about me, and the place seemed suitable; never a
light, never a house—nothing but stubble-fields, fallows, and a few stunted
trees. I stopped and eyed him in the moonlight with an angry stare.

“Enough of this foolery!” said I.

He had turned, and now faced me full, very pale, but with no sign of
shrinking.

“I am quite of your opinion,” said he. “You have tried me at the running;
you can try me next at the high jump. It will be all the same. It must end the
one way.”

I made my holly whistle about my head.

“I believe you know what way!” said I. “We are alone, it is night, and I
am wholly resolved. Are you not frightened?”

“No,” he said, “not in the smallest. I do not box, sir; but I am not a
coward, as you may have supposed. Perhaps it will simplify our relations if
I tell you at the outset that I walk armed.”

Quick as lightning I made a feint at his head; as quickly he gave ground,
and at the same time I saw a pistol glitter in his hand.

“No more of that, Mr. French-Prisoner!” he said. “It will do me no good
to have your death at my door.”

“Faith, nor me either!” said I; and I lowered my stick and considered the
man, not without a twinkle of admiration. “You see,” I said, “there is one
consideration that you appear to overlook: there are a great many chances
that your pistol may miss fire.”

“I have a pair,” he returned. “Never travel without a brace of barkers.”

“I make you my compliment,” said I. “You are able to take care of
yourself, and that is a good trait. But, my good man! let us look at this
matter dispassionately. You are not a coward, and no more am I; we are
both men of excellent sense; I have good reason, whatever it may be, to
keep my concerns to myself and to walk alone. Now, I put it to you
pointedly, am I likely to stand it? Am I likely to put up with your continued
and—excuse me—highly impudent ingérence into my private affairs?”

“Another French word,” says he composedly.

“O! damn your French words!” cried I. “You seem to be a Frenchman
yourself!”

“I have had many opportunities by which I have profited,” he explained.
“Few men are better acquainted with the similarities and differences,
whether of idiom or accent, of the two languages.”

“You are a pompous fellow, too!” said I.

“O, I can make distinctions, sir,” says he. “I can talk with Bedfordshire
peasants; and I can express myself becomingly, I hope, in the company of a
gentleman of education like yourself.”

“If you set up to be a gentleman——” I began.

“Pardon me,” he interrupted: “I make no such claim. I only see the
nobility and gentry in the way of business. I am quite a plain person.”

“For the Lord’s sake,” I exclaimed, “set my mind at rest upon one point.
In the name of mystery, who and what are you?”

“I have no cause to be ashamed of my name, sir,” said he, “nor yet my
trade. I am Thomas Dudgeon, at your service, clerk to Mr. Daniel Romaine,
solicitor of London; High Holborn is our address, sir.”

It was only by the ecstasy of the relief that I knew how horribly I had
been frightened. I flung my stick on the road.

“Romaine?” I cried. “Daniel Romaine? An old hunks with a red face and
a big head, and got up like a Quaker? My dear friend, to my arms!”

“Keep back, I say!” said Dudgeon weakly.

I would not listen to him. With the end of my own alarm, I felt as if I
must infallibly be at the end of all dangers likewise; as if the pistol that he
held in one hand were no more to be feared than the valise that he carried
with the other, and now put up like a barrier against my advance.

“Keep back, or I declare I will fire,” he was crying. “Have a care, for
God’s sake! My pistol——”

He might scream as he pleased. Willy nilly, I folded him to my breast, I
pressed him there, I kissed his ugly mug as it had never been kissed before
and would never be kissed again; and in the doing so knocked his wig awry
and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of
the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears incomparably
reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering to advance on
Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was

about it. But all’s well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept
singing and whistling on the streets:—

“There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft
And looks out for the life of poor Jack.”

“There!” said I, releasing him a little, but still keeping my hands on his
shoulders, “je vous ai bel et bien embrassé—and, as you would say, there is
another French word.” With his wig over one eye, he looked incredibly
rueful and put out. “Cheer up, Dudgeon; the ordeal is over, you shall be
embraced no more. But do, first of all, for God’s sake, put away your pistol;
you handle it as if you were a cockatrice; some time or other, depend upon
it, it will certainly go off. Here is your hat. No, let me put it on square, and
the wig before it. Never suffer any stress of circumstances to come between
you and the duty you owe to yourself. If you have nobody else to dress for,
dress for God!

“Put your wig straight
On your bald pate,
Keep your chin scraped,
And your figure draped.

Can you match me that? The whole duty of man in a quatrain! And remark,
I do not set up to be a professional bard; these are the outpourings of a
dilettante.”

“But, my dear sir!” he exclaimed.

“But, my dear sir!” I echoed, “I will allow no man to interrupt the flow of
my ideas. Give me your opinion on my quatrain, or I vow we shall have a
quarrel of it.”

“Certainly you are quite an original,” he said.

“Quite,” said I; “and I believe I have my counterpart before me.”

“Well, for a choice,” says he, smiling, “and whether for sense or poetry,
give me

“‘Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow:
The rest is all but leather and prunello.’”

“Oh, but that’s not fair—that’s Pope! It’s not original, Dudgeon.
Understand me,” said I, wringing his breast-button, “the first duty of all
poetry is to be mine, sir—mine. Inspiration now swells in my bosom,
because—to tell you the plain truth, and descend a little in style—I am
devilish relieved at the turn things have taken. So, I dare say, are you
yourself, Dudgeon, if you would only allow it. And à propos, let me ask
you a home question. Between friends, have you ever fired that pistol?”

“Why, yes, sir,” he replied. “Twice—at hedge-sparrows.”

“And you would have fired at me, you bloody-minded man?” I cried.

“If you go to that, you seemed mighty reckless with your stick,” said
Dudgeon.

“Did I indeed? Well, well, ’tis all past history; ancient as King
Pharamond—which is another French word, if you cared to accumulate
more evidence,” says I. “But happily we are now the best of friends, and
have all our interests in common.”

“You go a little too fast, if you’ll excuse me, Mr.——: I do not know
your name, that I am aware,” said Dudgeon.

“No, to be sure!” said I. “Never heard of it!”

“A word of explanation——” he began.

“No, Dudgeon!” I interrupted. “Be practical; I know what you want, and
the name of it is supper. Rien ne creuse comme l’émotion. I am hungry
myself, and yet I am more accustomed to warlike palpitations than you,
who are but a hunter of hedge-sparrows. Let me look at your face critically:
your bill of fare is three slices of cold rare roast beef, a Welsh rabbit, a pot
of stout, and a glass or two of sound tawny port, old in bottle—the right
milk of Englishmen.” Methought there seemed a brightening in his eye and
a melting about his mouth at this enumeration.

“The night is young,” I continued; “not much past eleven, for a wager.
Where can we find a good inn? And remark that I say good, for the port
must be up to the occasion—not a headache in a pipe of it.”

“Really, sir,” he said, smiling a little, “you have a way of carrying things
——”

“Will nothing make you stick to the subject?” I cried; “you have the most
irrelevant mind! How do you expect to rise in your profession? The inn?”

“Well, I will say you are a facetious gentleman!” said he. “You must have
your way, I see. We are not three miles from Bedford by this very road.”

“Done!” cried I. “Bedford be it!”

I tucked his arm under mine, possessed myself of the valise, and walked
him off unresisting. Presently we came to an open piece of country lying a
thought downhill. The road was smooth and free of ice, the moonshine thin
and bright over the meadows and the leafless trees. I was now honestly
done with the purgatory of the covered cart; I was close to my great-uncle’s;
I had no more fear of Mr. Dudgeon: which were all grounds enough for
jollity. And I was aware, besides, of us two as of a pair of tiny and solitary
dolls under the vast frosty cupola of the midnight; the rooms decked, the

moon burnished, the least of the stars lighted, the floor swept and waxed,
and nothing wanting but for the band to strike up and the dancing to begin.
In the exhilaration of my heart I took the music on myself—

“Merrily danced the Quaker’s wife,
And merrily danced the Quaker.”

I broke into that animated and appropriate air, clapped my arm about
Dudgeon’s waist, and away down the hill at a dancing step! He hung back a
little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my example,
were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even
Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher were the
capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and
gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden—really like balm—what
appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he
had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal had
given me in the immediate past.

Presently we began to see the lights of Bedford. My puritanic companion
stopped and disengaged himself.

“This is a trifle infra dig., sir, is it not?” said he. “A party might suppose
we had been drinking.”

“And so you shall be, Dudgeon,” said I. “You shall not only be drinking,
you old hypocrite, but you shall be drunk—dead drunk, sir—and the boots
shall put you to bed! We’ll warn him when we go in. Never neglect a
precaution; never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day!”

But he had no more frivolity to complain of. We finished our stage and
came to the inn-door with decorum, to find the house still alight and in a
bustle with many late arrivals; to give our orders with a prompt severity

which ensured obedience, and to be served soon after at a side-table, close
to the fire and in a blaze of candle-light, with such a meal as I had been
dreaming of for days past. For days, you are to remember, I had been
skulking in the covered cart, a prey to cold, hunger, and an accumulation of
discomforts that might have daunted the most brave; and the white table
napery, the bright crystal, the reverberation of the fire, the red curtains, the
Turkey carpet, the portraits on the coffee-room wall, the placid faces of the
two or three late guests who were silently prolonging the pleasures of
digestion, and (last, but not by any means least) a glass of an excellent light
dry port, put me in a humour only to be described as heavenly. The thought
of the Colonel, of how he would have enjoyed this snug room and roaring
fire, and of his cold grave in the wood by Market Bosworth, lingered on my
palate, amari aliquid, like an after-taste, but was not able—I say it with
shame—entirely to dispel my self-complacency. After all, in this world
every dog hangs by its own tail. I was a free adventurer, who had just
brought to a successful end—or, at least, within view of it—an adventure
very difficult and alarming; and I looked across at Mr. Dudgeon, as the port
rose to his cheeks, and a smile, that was semi-confidential and a trifle
foolish, began to play upon his leathery features, not only with composure,
but with a suspicion of kindness. The rascal had been brave, a quality for
which I would value the devil; and if he had been pertinacious in the
beginning, he had more than made up for it before the end.

“And now, Dudgeon, to explain,” I began. “I know your master, he
knows me, and he knows and approves of my errand. So much I may tell
you, that I am on my way to Amersham Place.”

“Oho!” quoth Dudgeon, “I begin to see.”

“I am heartily glad of it,” said I, passing the bottle, “because that is about
all I can tell you. You must take my word for the remainder. Either believe
me or don’t. If you don’t, let’s take a chaise; you can carry me to-morrow to

High Holborn, and confront me with Mr. Romaine; the result of which will
be to set your mind at rest—and to make the holiest disorder in your
master’s plans. If I judge you aright (for I find you a shrewd fellow), this
will not be at all to your mind. You know what a subordinate gets by
officiousness; if I can trust my memory, old Romaine has not at all the face
that I should care to see in anger; and I venture to predict surprising results
upon your weekly salary—if you are paid by the week, that is. In short, let
me go free, and ’tis an end of the matter; take me to London, and ’tis only a
beginning—and, by my opinion, a beginning of troubles. You can take your
choice.”

“And that is soon taken,” said he. “Go to Amersham to-morrow, or go to
the devil if you prefer—I wash my hands of you and the whole transaction.
No, you don’t find me putting my head in between Romaine and a client! A
good man of business, sir, but hard as millstone grit. I might get the sack,
and I shouldn’t wonder! But, it’s a pity, too,” he added, and sighed, shook
his head, and took his glass off sadly.

“That reminds me,” said I. “I have a great curiosity, and you can satisfy
it. Why were you so forward to meddle with poor Mr. Dubois? Why did you
transfer your attentions to me? And generally, what induced you to make
yourself such a nuisance?”

He blushed deeply.

“Why, sir,” says he, “there is such a thing as patriotism, I hope.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE HOME-COMING OF MR. ROWLEY’S VISCOUNT

By eight the next morning Dudgeon and I had made our parting. By that
time we had grown to be extremely familiar; and I would very willingly
have kept him by me, and even carried him to Amersham Place. But it
appeared he was due at the public-house where we had met, on some affairs
of my great-uncle the Count, who had an outlying estate in that part of the
shire. If Dudgeon had had his way the night before, I should have been
arrested on my uncle’s land and by my uncle’s agent, a culmination of ill-
luck.

A little after noon I started, in a hired chaise, by way of Dunstable. The
mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every one supple and
smiling. It was plainly a great house, and my uncle lived there in style. The
fame of it rose as we approached, like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they
touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I
thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such
smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady
bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling
of keys. “You’re probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may
’ave better accounts of his lordship’s ’elth, sir. We understood that his
lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss,
poor, dear, noble gentleman; and I’m sure nobody more polite! They do say,
sir, his wealth is enormous, and before the Revolution, quite a prince in his
own country! But I beg your pardon, sir; ’ow I do run on, to be sure; and
doubtless all beknown to you already! For you do resemble the family, sir. I
should have known you anywheres by the likeness to the dear viscount. Ha,
poor gentleman, he must ’ave a ’eavy ’eart these days!”

In the same place I saw out of the inn-windows a man-servant passing in
the livery of my house, which you are to think I had never before seen

worn, or not that I could remember. I had often enough, indeed, pictured
myself advanced to be a Marshal, a Duke of the Empire, a Grand Cross of
the Legion of Honour, and some other kickshaws of the kind, with a perfect
rout of flunkeys correctly dressed in my own colours. But it is one thing to
imagine, and another to see; it would be one thing to have these liveries in a
house of my own in Paris—it was quite another to find them flaunting in
the heart of hostile England; and I fear I should have made a fool of myself,
if the man had not been on the other side of the street, and I at a one-pane
window. There was something illusory in this transplantation of the wealth
and honours of a family, a thing by its nature so deeply rooted in the soil;
something ghostly in this sense of home-coming so far from home.

From Dunstable I rolled away into a crescendo of similar impressions.
There are certainly few things to be compared with these castles, or rather
country seats, of the English nobility and gentry; nor anything at all to equal
the servility of the population that dwells in their neighbourhood. Though I
was but driving in a hired chaise, word of my destination seemed to have
gone abroad, and the women curtsied and the men louted to me by the
wayside. As I came near I began to appreciate the roots of this widespread
respect. The look of my uncle’s park wall, even from the outside, had
something of a princely character; and when I came in view of the house
itself, a sort of madness of vicarious vainglory struck me dumb and kept me
staring. It was about the size of the Tuileries. It faced due north; and the last
rays of the sun, that was setting like a red-hot shot amidst a tumultuous
gathering of snow-clouds, were reflected on the endless rows of windows.
A portico of Doric columns adorned the front, and would have done honour
to a temple. The servant who received me at the door was civil to a fault—I
had almost said, to offence; and the hall to which he admitted me through a
pair of glass doors was warmed and already partly lighted by a liberal
chimney heaped with the roots of beeches.

“Vicomte Anne de Saint-Yves,” said I, in answer to the man’s question;
whereupon he bowed before me lower still, and stepping upon one side
introduced me to the truly awful presence of the major-domo. I have seen
many dignitaries in my time, but none who quite equalled this eminent
being; who was good enough to answer to the unassuming name of
Dawson. From him I learned that my uncle was extremely low, a doctor in
close attendance, Mr. Romaine expected at any moment, and that my
cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Yves, had been sent for the same morning.

“It was a sudden seizure, then?” I asked.

Well, he would scarcely go as far as that. It was a decline, a fading away,
sir; but he was certainly took bad the day before, had sent for Mr. Romaine,
and the major-domo had taken it on himself a little later to send word to the
Viscount. “It seemed to me, my lord,” said he, “as if this was a time when
all the fambly should be called together.”

I approved him with my lips, but not in my heart. Dawson was plainly in
the interests of my cousin.

“And when can I expect to see my great-uncle, the Count?” said I.

In the evening, I was told; in the meantime he would show me to my
room, which had been long prepared for me, and I should be expected to
dine in about an hour with the doctor, if my lordship had no objections.

My lordship had not the faintest.

“At the same time,” I said, “I have had an accident: I have unhappily lost
my baggage, and am here in what I stand in. I don’t know if the doctor be a
formalist, but it is quite impossible I should appear at table as I ought.”

He begged me to be under no anxiety. “We have been long expecting
you,” said he. “All is ready.”

Such I found to be the truth. A great room had been prepared for me;
through the mullioned windows the last flicker of the winter sunset
interchanged with the reverberation of a royal fire; the bed was open, a suit
of evening clothes was airing before the blaze, and from the far corner a
boy came forward with deprecatory smiles. The dream in which I had been
moving seemed to have reached its pitch. I might have quitted this house
and room only the night before; it was my own place that I had come to;
and for the first time in my life I understood the force of the words home
and welcome.

“This will be all as you would want, sir?” said Mr. Dawson. “This ’ere
boy, Rowley, we place entirely at your disposition. E’s not exactly a trained
vallet, but Mosha Powl, the Viscount’s gentleman, ’ave give him the
benefick of a few lessons, and it is ’oped that he may give sitisfection.
Hanythink that you may require, if you will be so good as to mention the
same to Rowley, I will make it my business myself, sir, to see you sitisfied.”

So saying, the eminent and already detested Mr. Dawson took his
departure, and I was left alone with Rowley. A man who may be said to
have wakened to consciousness in the prison of the Abbaye, among those
ever graceful and ever tragic figures of the brave and fair, awaiting the hour
of the guillotine and denuded of every comfort, I had never known the
luxuries or the amenities of my rank in life. To be attended on by servants I
had only been accustomed to in inns. My toilet had long been military, to a
moment, at the note of a bugle, too often at a ditch-side. And it need not be
wondered at if I looked on my new valet with a certain diffidence. But I
remembered that if he was my first experience of a valet, I was his first trial
as a master. Cheered by which consideration, I demanded my bath in a style
of good assurance. There was a bath-room contiguous; in an incredibly
short space of time the hot water was ready; and soon after, arrayed in a
shawl dressing-gown and in a luxury of contentment and comfort, I was

reclined in an easy-chair before the mirror, while Rowley, with a mixture of
pride and anxiety which I could well understand, laid out his razors.

“Hey, Rowley?” I asked, not quite resigned to go under fire with such an
inexperienced commander. “It’s all right, is it? You feel pretty sure of your
weapons?”

“Yes, my lord,” he replied. “It’s all right, I assure your lordship.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Rowley, but for the sake of shortness, would you
mind not belording me in private?” said I. “It will do very well if you call
me Mr. Anne. It is the way of my country, as I dare say you know.”

Mr. Rowley looked blank.

“But you’re just as much a Viscount as Mr. Powl’s, are you not?” he said.

“As Mr. Powl’s Viscount?” said I, laughing. “O, keep your mind easy,
Mr. Rowley’s is every bit as good. Only, you see, as I am of the younger
line, I bear my Christian name along with the title. Alain is the Viscount; I
am the Viscount Anne. And in giving me the name of Mr. Anne, I assure you
you will be quite regular.”

“Yes, Mr. Anne,” said the docile youth. “But about the shaving, sir, you
need be under no alarm. Mr. Powl says I ’ave excellent dispositions.”

“Mr. Powl?” said I. “That doesn’t seem to me very like a French name.”

“No, sir, indeed, my lord,” said he, with a burst of confidence. “No,
indeed, Mr. Anne, and it do not surely. I should say now, it was more like
Mr. Pole.”

“And Mr. Powl is the Viscount’s man?”

“Yes, Mr. Anne,” said he. “He ’ave a hard billet, he do. The Viscount is a
very particular gentleman. I don’t think as you’ll be, Mr. Anne?” he added,
with a confidential smile in the mirror.

He was about sixteen, well set up, with a pleasant, merry, freckled face,
and a pair of dancing eyes. There was an air at once deprecatory and
insinuating about the rascal that I thought I recognised. There came to me
from my own boyhood memories of certain passionate admirations long
passed away, and the objects of them long ago discredited or dead. I
remembered how anxious I had been to serve those fleeting heroes, how
readily I told myself I would have died for them, how much greater and
handsomer than life they had appeared. And, looking in the mirror, it
seemed to me that I read the face of Rowley, like an echo or a ghost, by the
light of my own youth. I have always contended (somewhat against the
opinion of my friends) that I am first of all an economist; and the last thing
that I would care to throw away is that very valuable piece of property—a
boy’s hero-worship.

“Why,” said I, “you shave like an angel, Mr. Rowley!”

“Thank you, my lord,” says he. “Mr. Powl had no fear of me. You may be
sure, sir, I should never ’ave had this berth if I ’adn’t ’ave been up to Dick.
We been expecting of you this month back. My eye! I never see such
preparations. Every day the fires has been kep’ up, the bed made, and all!
As soon as it was known you were coming, sir, I got the appointment; and
I’ve been up and down since then like a Jack-in-the-box. A wheel couldn’t
sound in the avenue but what I was at the window! I’ve had a many
disappointments; but to-night, as soon as you stepped out of the shay, I
knew it was my—it was you. O, you had been expected! Why, when I go
down to supper, I’ll be the ’ero of the servants’ ’all: the ’ole of the staff is
that curious!”

“Well,” said I, “I hope you may be able to give a fair account of me—
sober, steady, industrious, good-tempered, and with a first-rate character
from my last place?”

He laughed an embarrassed laugh. “Your hair curls beautiful,” he said, by
way of changing the subject. “The Viscount’s the boy for curls, though; and
the richness of it is, Mr. Powl tells me his don’t curl no more than that much
twine—by nature. Gettin’ old, the Viscount is. He ’ave gone the pace,
’aven’t ’e, sir?”

“The fact is,” said I, “that I know very little about him. Our family has
been much divided, and I have been a soldier from a child.”

“A soldier, Mr. Anne, sir?” cried Rowley, with a sudden feverish
animation. “Was you ever wounded?”

It is contrary to my principles to discourage admiration for myself; and,
slipping back the shoulder of the dressing-gown, I silently exhibited the
scar which I had received in Edinburgh Castle. He looked at it with awe.

“Ah, well!” he continued, “there’s where the difference comes in! It’s in
the training. The other Viscount have been horse-racing, and dicing, and
carrying on all his life. All right enough, no doubt; but what I do say is that
it don’t lead to nothink. Whereas——”

“Whereas Mr. Rowley’s?” I put in.

“My Viscount?” said he. “Well, sir, I did say it; and now that I’ve seen
you, I say it again!”

I could not refrain from smiling at this outburst, and the rascal caught me
in the mirror and smiled to me again.

“I’d say it again, Mr. Hanne,” he said. “I know which side my bread’s
buttered. I know when a gen’leman’s a gen’leman. Mr. Powl can go to

Putney with his one! Beg your pardon, Mr. Anne, for being so familiar,”
said he, blushing suddenly scarlet. “I was especially warned against it by
Mr. Powl.”

“Discipline before all,” said I. “Follow your front-rank man.”

With that we began to turn our attention to the clothes. I was amazed to
find them fit so well: not à la diable, in the haphazard manner of a soldier’s
uniform or a ready-made suit; but with nicety, as a trained artist might
rejoice to make them for a favourite subject.

“’Tis extraordinary,” cried I: “these things fit me perfectly.”

“Indeed, Mr. Anne, you two be very much of a shape,” said Rowley.

“Who? What two?” said I.

“The Viscount,” he said.

“Damnation! Have I the man’s clothes on me, too?” cried I.

But Rowley hastened to reassure me. On the first word of my coming the
Count had put the matter of my wardrobe in the hands of his own and my
cousin’s tailors; and on the rumour of our resemblance, my clothes had been
made to Alain’s measure.

“But they were all made for you express, Mr. Anne. You may be certain
the Count would never do nothing by ’alf: fires kep’ burning; the finest of
clothes ordered, I’m sure, and a body-servant being trained a-purpose.”

“Well,” said I, “it’s a good fire, and a good set-out of clothes; and what a
valet, Mr. Rowley! And there’s one thing to be said for my cousin—I mean
for Mr. Powl’s Viscount—he has a very fair figure.”

“O, don’t you be took in, Mr. Anne,” quoth the faithless Rowley: “he has
to be hyked into a pair of stays to get them things on!”

“Come, come, Mr. Rowley,” said I, “this is telling tales out of school! Do
not you be deceived. The greatest men of antiquity, including Cæsar and
Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very glad, at my time of life or
Alain’s, to follow his example. ’Tis a misfortune common to all; and
really,” said I, bowing to myself before the mirror like one who should
dance the minuet, “when the result is so successful as this, who would do
anything but applaud?”

My toilet concluded, I marched on to fresh surprises. My chamber, my
new valet, and my new clothes had been beyond hope: the dinner, the soup,
the whole bill of fare was a revelation of the powers there are in man. I had
not supposed it lay in the genius of any cook to create, out of common beef
and mutton, things so different and dainty. The wine was of a piece, the
doctor a most agreeable companion; nor could I help reflecting on the
prospect that all this wealth, comfort, and handsome profusion might still
very possibly become mine. Here were a change, indeed, from the common
soldier and the camp kettle, the prisoner and his prison rations, the fugitive
and the horrors of the covered cart!

CHAPTER XVII

THE DESPATCH-BOX

The doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an apology
to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after I was myself
summoned and ushered up the great staircase and along interminable
corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the Count. You are to think that
up to the present moment I had not set eyes on this formidable personage,
only on the evidences of his wealth and kindness. You are to think besides
that I had heard him miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up.
The first of the émigrés could never expect a good word in the society in
which my father moved. Even yet the reports I received were of a doubtful
nature; even Romaine had drawn of him no very amiable portrait; and as I
was ushered into the room, it was a critical eye that I cast on my great-
uncle. He lay propped on pillows in a little cot no greater than a camp-bed,
not visibly breathing. He was about eighty years of age, and looked it; not
that his face was much lined, but all the blood and colour seemed to have
faded from his body, and even his eyes, which last he kept usually closed,
as though the light distressed him. There was an unspeakable degree of
slyness in his expression, which kept me ill at ease; he seemed to lie there
with his arms folded, like a spider waiting for prey. His speech was very
deliberate and courteous, but scarce louder than a sigh.

“I bid you welcome, Monsieur le Vicomte Anne,” said he, looking at me
hard with his pale eyes, but not moving on his pillows. “I have sent for you,
and I thank you for the obliging expedition you have shown. It is my
misfortune that I cannot rise to receive you. I trust you have been
reasonably well entertained?”

“Monsieur mon oncle,” I said, bowing very low, “I am come at the
summons of the head of my family.”

“It is well,” he said. “Be seated. I should be glad to hear some news—if
that can be called news that is already twenty years old—of how I have the
pleasure to see you here.”

By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the times
that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt myself
surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the delight of my welcome
was turned to ashes in my mouth.

“That is soon told, monseigneur,” said I. “I understand that I need tell
you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only the story of the
lost dog.”

“You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable affair; it is
painful to me. My nephew, your father, was a man who would not be
advised,” said he. “Tell me, if you please, simply of yourself.”

“I am afraid I must run the risk of harrowing your sensibility in the
beginning,” said I, with a bitter smile, “because my story begins at the foot
of the guillotine. When the list came out that night, and her name was there,
I was already old enough, not in years but in sad experience, to understand
the extent of my misfortune. She——” I paused. “Enough that she arranged
with a friend, Madame de Chasseradès, that she should take charge of me,
and by the favour of our gaolers I was suffered to remain in the shelter of
the Abbaye. That was my only refuge; there was no corner of France that I
could rest the sole of my foot upon except the prison. Monsieur le Comte,
you are as well aware as I can be what kind of a life that was, and how
swiftly death smote in that society. I did not wait long before the name of
Madame de Chasseradès succeeded to that of my mother on the list. She
passed me on to Madame de Noytot; she, in her turn, to Mademoiselle de
Braye; and there were others. I was the one thing permanent; they were all
transient as clouds; a day or two of their care, and then came the last
farewell and—somewhere far off in that roaring Paris that surrounded us—
the bloody scene. I was the cherished one, the last comfort, of these dying
women. I have been in pitched fights, my lord, and I never knew such
courage. It was all done smiling, in the tone of good society; belle maman

was the name I was taught to give to each; and for a day or two the new
‘pretty mamma’ would make much of me, show me off, teach me the
minuet, and to say my prayers; and then, with a tender embrace, would go
the way of her predecessors, smiling. There were some that wept too. There
was a childhood! All the time Monsieur de Culemberg kept his eye on me,
and would have had me out of the Abbaye and in his own protection, but
my ‘pretty mammas’ one after another resisted the idea. Where could I be
safer? they argued; and what was to become of them without the darling of
the prison? Well, it was soon shown how safe I was! The dreadful day of
the massacre came; the prison was overrun; none paid attention to me, not
even the last of my ‘pretty mammas,’ for she had met another fate. I was
wandering distracted, when I was found by some one in the interests of
Monsieur de Culemberg. I understand he was sent on purpose; I believe, in
order to reach the interior of the prison, he had set his hand to nameless
barbarities; such was the price paid for my worthless, whimpering little life!
He gave me his hand; it was wet, and mine was reddened; he led me
unresisting. I remember but the one circumstance of my flight—it was my
last view of my last ‘pretty mamma.’ Shall I describe it to you?” I asked the
Count, with a sudden fierceness.

“Avoid unpleasant details,” observed my great-uncle gently.

At these words a sudden peace fell upon me. I had been angry with the
man before; I had not sought to spare him; and now, in a moment, I saw that
there was nothing to spare. Whether from natural heartlessness or extreme
old age, the soul was not at home; and my benefactor, who had kept the fire
lit in my room for a month past—my only relative except Alain, whom I
knew already to be a hired spy—had trodden out the last sparks of hope and
interest.

“Certainly,” said I; “and, indeed, the day for them is nearly over. I was
taken to Monsieur de Culemberg’s,—I presume, sir, that you know the

Abbé de Culemberg?”

He indicated assent without opening his eyes.

“He was a very brave and a very learned man——”

“And a very holy one,” said my uncle civilly.

“And a very holy one, as you observe,” I continued. “He did an infinity
of good, and through all the Terror kept himself from the guillotine. He
brought me up and gave me such education as I have. It was in his house in
the country at Dammarie, near Melun, that I made the acquaintance of your
agent, Mr. Vicary, who lay there in hiding, only to fall a victim at the last to
a gang of chauffeurs.”

“That poor Mr. Vicary!” observed my uncle. “He had been many times in
my interests to France, and this was his first failure. Quel charmant homme,
n’est-ce pas?”

“Infinitely so,” said I. “But I would not willingly detain you any further
with a story, the details of which it must naturally be more or less
unpleasant for you to hear. Suffice it that, by M. de Culemberg’s own
advice, I said farewell at eighteen to that kind preceptor and his books, and
entered the service of France; and have since then carried arms in such a
manner as not to disgrace my family.”

“You narrate well; vous avez la voix chaude,” said my uncle, turning on
his pillows as if to study me. “I have a very good account of you by
Monsieur de Mauséant, whom you helped in Spain. And you had some
education, from the Abbé de Culemberg, a man of good house? Yes, you
will do very well. You have a good manner and a handsome person, which
hurts nothing. We are all handsome in the family; even I myself, I have had
my successes, the memories of which still charm me. It is my intention, my
nephew, to make of you my heir. I am not very well content with my other

nephew, Monsieur le Vicomte: he has not been respectful, which is the
flattery due to age. And there are other matters.”

I was half tempted to throw back in his face that inheritance so coldly
offered. At the same time I had to consider that he was an old man, and,
after all, my relation; and that I was a poor one, in considerable straits, with
a hope at heart which that inheritance might yet enable me to realise. Nor
could I forget that, however icy his manners, he had behaved to me from the
first with the extreme of liberality and—I was about to write, kindness, but
the word, in that connection, would not come. I really owed the man some
measure of gratitude, which it would be an ill manner to repay if I were to
insult him on his deathbed.

“Your will, monsieur, must ever be my rule,” said I, bowing.

“You have wit, monsieur mon neveu,” said he, “the best wit—the wit of
silence. Many might have deafened me with their gratitude. Gratitude!” he
repeated, with a peculiar intonation, and lay and smiled to himself. “But to
approach what is more important. As a prisoner of war, will it be possible
for you to be served heir to English estates? I have no idea: long as I have
dwelt in England, I have never studied what they call their laws. On the
other hand, how if Romaine should come too late? I have two pieces of
business to be transacted—to die, and to make my will; and, however
desirous I may be to serve you, I cannot postpone the first in favour of the
second beyond a very few hours.”

“Well, sir, I must then contrive to be doing as I did before,” said I.

“Not so,” said the Count. “I have an alternative. I have just drawn my
balance at my banker’s, a considerable sum, and I am now to place it in
your hands. It will be so much for you and so much less——” he paused,
and smiled with an air of malignity that surprised me. “But it is necessary it
should be done before witnesses. Monsieur le Vicomte is of a particular

disposition, and an unwitnessed donation may very easily be twisted into a
theft.”

He touched a bell, which was answered by a man having the appearance
of a confidential valet. To him he gave a key.

“Bring me the despatch-box that came yesterday, La Ferrière,” said he.
“You will at the same time present my compliments to Dr. Hunter and M.
l’Abbé, and request them to step for a few moments to my room.”

The despatch-box proved to be rather a bulky piece of baggage, covered
with Russia leather. Before the doctor and an excellent old smiling priest it
was passed over into my hands with a very clear statement of the disposer’s
wishes; immediately after which, though the witnesses remained behind to
draw up and sign a joint note of the transaction, Monsieur de Kéroual
dismissed me to my own room, La Ferrière following with the invaluable
box.

At my chamber door I took it from him with thanks, and entered alone.
Everything had been already disposed for the night, the curtains drawn and
the fire trimmed; and Rowley was still busy with my bed-clothes. He turned
round as I entered with a look of welcome that did my heart good. Indeed, I
had never a much greater need of human sympathy, however trivial, than at
that moment when I held a fortune in my arms. In my uncle’s room I had
breathed the very atmosphere of disenchantment. He had gorged my
pockets; he had starved every dignified or affectionate sentiment of a man. I
had received so chilling an impression of age and experience that the mere
look of youth drew me to confide in Rowley: he was only a boy, his heart
must beat yet, he must still retain some innocence and natural feelings, he
could blurt out follies with his mouth, he was not a machine to utter perfect
speech! At the same time I was beginning to outgrow the painful
impressions of my interview; my spirits were beginning to revive; and at

the jolly, empty looks of Mr. Rowley, as he ran forward to relieve me of the
box, St. Ives became himself again.

“Now, Rowley, don’t be in a hurry,” said I. “This is a momentous
juncture. Man and boy, you have been in my service about three hours. You
must already have observed that I am a gentleman of a somewhat morose
disposition, and there is nothing that I more dislike than the smallest
appearance of familiarity. Mr. Pole or Mr. Powl, probably in the spirit of
prophecy, warned you against this danger.”

“Yes, Mr. Anne,” said Rowley blankly.

“Now there has just arisen one of those rare cases in which I am willing
to depart from my principles. My uncle has given me a box—what you
would call a Christmas box. I don’t know what’s in it, and no more do you:
perhaps I’m an April fool, or perhaps I am already enormously wealthy;
there might be five hundred pounds in this apparently harmless receptacle!”

“Lord, Mr. Anne!” cried Rowley.

“Now, Rowley, hold up your right hand and repeat the words of the oath
after me,” said I, laying the despatch-box on the table. “Strike me blue if I
ever disclose to Mr. Powl, or Mr. Powl’s Viscount, or anything that is Mr.
Powl’s, not to mention Mr. Dawson and the doctor, the treasures of the
following despatch-box; and strike me sky-blue scarlet if I do not
continually maintain, uphold, love, honour, and obey, serve, and follow to
the four corners of the earth and the waters that are under the earth, the
hereinafter before-mentioned (only that I find I have neglected to mention
him) Viscount Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, commonly known as Mr.
Rowley’s Viscount. So be it. Amen.”

He took the oath with the same exaggerated seriousness as I gave it to
him.

“Now,” said I. “Here is the key for you; I will hold the lid with both
hands in the meanwhile.” He turned the key. “Bring up all the candles in the
room, and range them alongside. What is it to be? A live gorgon, a Jack-in-
the-box, or a spring that fires a pistol? On your knees, sir, before the
prodigy!”

So saying, I turned the despatch-box upside down upon the table. At sight
of the heap of bank paper and gold that lay in front of us between the
candles, or rolled upon the floor alongside, I stood astonished.

“O Lord!” cried Mr. Rowley; “O Lordy, Lordy, Lord!” and he scrambled
after the fallen guineas. “O my, Mr. Anne! what a sight o’ money! Why, it’s
like a blessed story-book. It’s like the Forty Thieves.”

“Now, Rowley, let’s be cool, let’s be business-like,” said I. “Riches are
deceitful, particularly when you haven’t counted them; and the first thing
we have to do is to arrive at the amount of my—let me say modest
competency. If I’m not mistaken, I have enough here to keep you in gold
buttons all the rest of your life. You collect the gold, and I’ll take the paper.”

Accordingly, down we sat together on the hearthrug, and for some time
there was no sound but the creasing of bills and the jingling of guineas,
broken occasionally by the exulting exclamations of Rowley. The
arithmetical operation on which we were embarked took long, and it might
have been tedious to others; not to me nor to my helper.

“Ten thousand pounds!” I announced at last.

“Ten thousand!” echoed Mr. Rowley.

And we gazed upon each other.

The greatness of this fortune took my breath away. With that sum in my
hands I need fear no enemies. People are arrested in nine cases out of ten,

not because the police are astute, but because they themselves run short of
money; and I had here before me in the despatch-box a succession of
devices and disguises that ensured my liberty. Not only so; but, as I felt
with a sudden and overpowering thrill, with ten thousand pounds in my
hand, I was become an eligible suitor. What advances I had made in the
past, as a private soldier in a military prison, or a fugitive by the wayside,
could only be qualified or, indeed, excused as acts of desperation. And now,
I might come in by the front door; I might approach the dragon with a
lawyer at my elbow, and rich settlements to offer. The poor French prisoner,
Champdivers, might be in a perpetual danger of arrest; but the rich
travelling Englishman, St. Ives, in his post-chaise, with his despatch-box by
his side, could smile at fate and laugh at locksmiths. I repeated the proverb,
exulting, Love laughs at locksmiths! In a moment, by the mere coming of
this money, my love had become possible—it had come near, it was under
my hand—and it may be by one of the curiosities of human nature, but it
burned that instant brighter.

“Rowley,” said I, “your Viscount is a made man.”

“Why, we both are, sir,” said Rowley.

“Yes, both,” said I; “and you shall dance at the wedding”; and I flung at
his head a bundle of bank notes, and had just followed it up with a handful
of guineas, when the door opened, and Mr. Romaine appeared upon the
threshold.

CHAPTER XVIII

MR. ROMAINE CALLS ME NAMES

Feeling very much of a fool to be thus taken by surprise, I scrambled to my
feet and hastened to make my visitor welcome. He did not refuse me his
hand; but he gave it with a coldness and distance for which I was quite
unprepared, and his countenance, as he looked on me, was marked in a
strong degree with concern and severity.

“So, sir, I find you here?” said he, in tones of little encouragement. “Is
that you, George? You can run away; I have business with your master.”

He showed Rowley out, and locked the door behind him. Then he sat
down in an armchair on one side of the fire, and looked at me with
uncompromising sternness.

“I am hesitating how to begin,” said he. “In this singular labyrinth of
blunders and difficulties that you have prepared for us, I am positively
hesitating where to begin. It will perhaps be best that you should read, first
of all, this paragraph.” And he handed over to me a newspaper.

The paragraph in question was brief. It announced the recapture of one of
the prisoners recently escaped from Edinburgh Castle; gave his name
Clausel, and added that he had entered into the particulars of the recent
revolting murder in the Castle, and denounced the murderer:

“It is a common soldier called Champdivers, who had himself escaped, and is in all
probability involved in the common fate of his comrades. In spite of the activity along all the
Forth and the East Coast, nothing has yet been seen of the sloop which these desperadoes seized
at Grangemouth, and it is now almost certain that they have found a watery grave.”

At the reading of this paragraph my heart turned over. In a moment I saw
my castle in the air ruined; myself changed from a mere military fugitive
into a hunted murderer, fleeing from the gallows; my love, which had a

moment since appeared so near to me, blotted from the field of possibility.
Despair, which was my first sentiment, did not, however, endure for more
than a moment. I saw that my companions had indeed succeeded in their
unlikely design; and that I was supposed to have accompanied and perished
along with them by shipwreck—a most probable ending to their enterprise.
If they thought me at the bottom of the North Sea, I need not fear much
vigilance on the streets of Edinburgh. Champdivers was wanted: what was
to connect him with St. Ives? Major Chevenix would recognise me if he
met me; that was beyond bargaining: he had seen me so often, his interest
had been kindled to so high a point, that I could hope to deceive him by no
stratagem of disguise. Well, even so; he would have a competition of
testimony before him: he knew Clausel, he knew me, and I was sure he
would decide for honour. At the same time, the image of Flora shot up in
my mind’s-eye with such a radiancy as fairly overwhelmed all other
considerations; the blood sprang to every corner of my body, and I vowed I
would see and win her, if it cost my neck.

“Very annoying, no doubt,” said I, as I returned the paper to Mr.
Romaine.

“Is annoying your word for it?” said he.

“Exasperating, if you like,” I admitted.

“And true?” he inquired.

“Well, true in a sense,” said I. “But perhaps I had better answer that
question by putting you in possession of the facts?”

“I think so, indeed,” said he.

I narrated to him as much as seemed necessary of the quarrel, the duel,
the death of Goguelat, and the character of Clausel. He heard me through in
a forbidding silence, nor did he at all betray the nature of his sentiments,

except that, at the episode of the scissors, I could observe his mulberry face
to turn three shades paler.

“I suppose I may believe you?” said he, when I had done.

“Or else conclude this interview,” said I.

“Can you not understand that we are here discussing matters of the
gravest import? Can you not understand that I feel myself weighted with a
load of responsibility on your account—that you should take this occasion
to air your fire-eating manners against your own attorney? There are serious
hours in life, Mr. Anne,” he said severely. “A capital charge, and that of a
very brutal character and with singularly unpleasant details; the presence of
the man Clausel, who (according to your account of it) is actuated by
sentiments of real malignity, and prepared to swear black white; all the
other witnesses scattered and perhaps drowned at sea; the natural prejudice
against a Frenchman and a runaway prisoner: this makes a serious total for
your lawyer to consider, and is by no means lessened by the incurable folly
and levity of your own disposition.”

“I beg your pardon!” said I.

“O, my expressions have been selected with scrupulous accuracy,” he
replied. “How did I find you, sir, when I came to announce this catastrophe?
You were sitting on the hearthrug playing, like a silly baby, with a servant,
were you not, and the floor all scattered with gold and bank paper? There
was a tableau for you! It was I who came, and you were lucky in that. It
might have been any one—your cousin as well as another.”

“You have me there, sir,” I admitted. “I had neglected all precautions, and
you do right to be angry. À propos, Mr. Romaine, how did you come
yourself, and how long have you been in the house?” I added, surprised, on
the retrospect, not to have heard him arrive.

“I drove up in a chaise and pair,” he returned. “Any one might have heard
me. But you were not listening, I suppose? being so extremely at your ease
in the very house of your enemy, and under a capital charge! And I have
been long enough here to do your business for you. Ah, yes, I did it, God
forgive me!—did it before I so much as asked you the explanation of the
paragraph. For some time back the will has been prepared; now it is signed;
and your uncle has heard nothing of your recent piece of activity. Why?
Well, I had no fancy to bother him on his deathbed: you might be innocent;
and at bottom I preferred the murderer to the spy.”

No doubt of it but the man played a friendly part: no doubt also that, in
his ill-temper and anxiety, he expressed himself unpalatably.

“You will perhaps find me over-delicate,” said I. “There is a word you
employed——”

“I employ the words of my brief, sir,” he cried, striking with his hand on
the newspaper. “It is there in six letters. And do not be so certain—you have
not stood your trial yet. It is an ugly affair, a fishy business. It is highly
disagreeable. I would give my hand off—I mean I would give a hundred
pound down—to have nothing to do with it. And, situated as we are, we
must at once take action. There is here no choice. You must at once quit this
country, and get to France, or Holland, or, indeed, to Madagascar.”

“There may be two words to that,” said I.

“Not so much as one syllable!” he retorted. “Here is no room for
argument. The case is nakedly plain. In the disgusting position in which you
have found means to place yourself, all that is to be hoped for is delay. A
time may come when we shall be able to do better. It cannot be now: now it
would be the gibbet.”

“You labour under a false impression, Mr. Romaine,” said I. “I have no
impatience to figure in the dock. I am even as anxious as yourself to
postpone my first appearance there. On the other hand, I have not the
slightest intention of leaving this country, where I please myself extremely.
I have a good address, a ready tongue, an English accent that passes, and,
thanks to the generosity of my uncle, as much money as I want. It would be
hard indeed if, with all these advantages, Mr. St. Ives should not be able to
live quietly in a private lodging, while the authorities amuse themselves by
looking for Champdivers. You forget, there is no connection between these
two personages.”

“And you forget your cousin,” retorted Romaine. “There is the link.
There is the tongue of the buckle. He knows you are Champdivers.” He put
up his hand as if to listen. “And, for a wager, here he is himself!” he
exclaimed.

As when a tailor takes a piece of goods upon his counter and rends it
across, there came to our ears from the avenue the long tearing sound of a
chaise and four approaching at the top speed of the horses. And, looking out
between the curtains, we beheld the lamps skimming on the smooth ascent.

“Ay,” said Romaine, wiping the window-pane that he might see more
clearly. “Ay, that he is by the driving! So he squanders money along the
king’s highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he meets with gold for
the pleasure of arriving—where? Ah, yes, where but a debtor’s gaol, if not a
criminal prison!”

“Is he that kind of a man?” I said, staring on these lamps as though I
could decipher in them the secret of my cousin’s character.

“You will find him a dangerous kind,” answered the lawyer. “For you,
these are the lights on a lee shore! I find I fall in a muse when I consider of
him; what a formidable being he once was, and what a personable! and how

near he draws to the moment that must break him utterly! We none of us
like him here; we hate him, rather; and yet I have a sense—I don’t think at
my time of life it can be pity—but a reluctance rather, to break anything so
big and figurative, as though he were a big porcelain pot or a big picture of
high price. Ay, there is what I was waiting for!” he cried, as the lights of a
second chaise swam in sight. “It is he beyond a doubt. The first was the
signature and the next the flourish. The two chaises, the second following
with the baggage, which is always copious and ponderous, and one of his
valets: he cannot go a step without a valet.”

“I hear you repeat the word big,” said I. “But it cannot be that he is
anything out of the way in stature.”

“No,” said the attorney. “About your height, as I guessed for the tailors,
and I see nothing wrong with the result. But, somehow, he commands an
atmosphere; he has a spacious manner; and he has kept up, all through life,
such a volume of racket about his personality, with his chaises and his
racers and his dicings, and I know not what—that somehow he imposes! It
seems, when the farce is done, and he locked in Fleet prison—and nobody
left but Buonaparte and Lord Wellington and the Hetman Platoff to make a
work about—the world will be in a comparison quite tranquil. But this is
beside the mark,” he added, with an effort, turning again from the window.
“We are now under fire, Mr. Anne, as you soldiers would say, and it is high
time we should prepare to go into action. He must not see you; that would
be fatal. All that he knows at present is that you resemble him, and that is
much more than enough. If it were possible, it would be well he should not
know you were in the house.”

“Quite impossible, depend upon it,” said I. “Some of the servants are
directly in his interests, perhaps in his pay: Dawson, for an example.”

“My own idea!” cried Romaine. “And at least,” he added, as the first of
the chaises drew up with a dash in front of the portico, “it is now too late.
Here he is.”

We stood listening, with a strange anxiety, to the various noises that
awoke in the silent house: the sound of doors opening and closing, the
sound of feet near at hand and farther off. It was plain the arrival of my
cousin was a matter of moment, almost of parade, to the household. And
suddenly, out of this confused and distant bustle, a rapid and light tread
became distinguishable. We heard it come upstairs, draw near along the
corridor, pause at the door, and a stealthy and hasty rapping succeeded.

“Mr. Anne—Mr. Anne, sir! Let me in!” said the voice of Rowley.

We admitted the lad, and locked the door again behind him.

“It’s him, sir,” he panted. “He’ve come.”

“You mean the Viscount?” said I. “So we supposed. But come, Rowley—
out with the rest of it! You have more to tell us, or your face belies you!”

“Mr. Anne, I do,” he said. “Mr. Romaine, sir, you’re a friend of his, ain’t
you?”

“Yes, George, I am a friend of his,” said Romaine, and, to my great
surprise, laid his hand upon my shoulder.

“Well, it’s this way,” said Rowley; “Mr. Powl have been at me! It’s to
play the spy! I thought he was at it from the first! From the first I see what
he was after—coming round and round, and hinting things! But to-night he
outs with it plump! I’m to let him hear all what you’re to do beforehand, he
says; and he gave me this for an arnest”—holding up half a guinea; “and I
took it, so I did! Strike me sky-blue scarlet!” says he, adducing the words of
the mock oath; and he looked askance at me as he did so.

I saw that he had forgotten himself, and that he knew it. The expression
of his eye changed almost in the passing of the glance from the significant
to the appealing—from the look of an accomplice to that of a culprit; and
from that moment he became the model of a well-drilled valet.

“Sky-blue scarlet?” repeated the lawyer. “Is the fool delirious?”

“No,” said I; “he is only reminding me of something.”

“Well—and I believe the fellow will be faithful,” said Romaine. “So you
are a friend of Mr. Anne’s too?” he added to Rowley.

“If you please, sir,” said Rowley.

“’Tis something sudden,” observed Romaine, “but it may be genuine
enough. I believe him to be honest. He comes of honest people. Well,
George Rowley, you might embrace some early opportunity to earn that
half-guinea by telling Mr. Powl that your master will not leave here till
noon to-morrow, if he go even then. Tell him there are a hundred things to
be done here, and a hundred more that can only be done properly at my
office in Holborn. Come to think of it—we had better see to that first of
all,” he went on, unlocking the door. “Get hold of Powl, and see. And be
quick back, and clear me up this mess.”

Mr. Rowley was no sooner gone than the lawyer took a pinch of snuff,
and regarded me with somewhat of a more genial expression.

“Sir,” said he, “it is very fortunate for you that your face is so strong a
letter of recommendation. Here am I, a tough old practitioner, mixing
myself up with your very distressing business; and here is this farmer’s lad,
who has the wit to take a bribe and the loyalty to come and tell you of it—
all, I take it, on the strength of your appearance. I wish I could imagine how
it would impress a jury!” says he.

“And how it would affect the hangman, sir?” I asked.

“Absit omen!” said Mr. Romaine devoutly.

We were just so far in our talk, when I heard a sound that brought my
heart into my mouth: the sound of some one slily trying the handle of the
door. It had been preceded by no audible footstep. Since the departure of
Rowley our wing of the house had been entirely silent. And we had every
right to suppose ourselves alone, and to conclude that the new-comer,
whoever he might be, was come on a clandestine, if not a hostile, errand.

“Who is there?” asked Romaine.

“It’s only me, sir,” said the soft voice of Dawson. “It’s the Viscount, sir.
He is very desirous to speak with you on business.”

“Tell him I shall come shortly, Dawson,” said the lawyer. “I am at present
engaged.”

“Thank you, sir!” said Dawson.

And we heard his feet draw off slowly along the corridor.

“Yes,” said Mr. Romaine, speaking low, and maintaining the attitude of
one intently listening, “there is another foot. I cannot be deceived!”

“I think there was indeed!” said I. “And what troubles me—I am not sure
that the other has gone entirely away. By the time it got the length of the
head of the stair the tread was plainly single.”

“Ahem—blockaded?” asked the lawyer.

“A siege en règle!” I exclaimed.

“Let us come farther from the door,” said Romaine, “and reconsider this
damnable position. Without doubt, Alain was this moment at the door. He

hoped to enter and get a view of you, as if by accident. Baffled in this, has
he stayed himself, or has he planted Dawson here by way of sentinel?”

“Himself, beyond a doubt,” said I. “And yet to what end? He cannot
think to pass the night there!”

“If it were only possible to pay no heed!” said Mr. Romaine. “But this is
the accursed drawback of your position. We can do nothing openly. I must
smuggle you out of this room and out of this house like seizable goods; and
how am I to set about it with a sentinel planted at your very door?”

“There is no good in being agitated,” said I.

“None at all,” he acquiesced. “And, come to think of it, it is droll enough
that I should have been that very moment commenting on your personal
appearance, when your cousin came upon this mission. I was saying, if you
remember, that your face was as good or better than a letter of
recommendation. I wonder if M. Alain would be like the rest of us—I
wonder what he would think of it?”

Mr. Romaine was sitting in a chair by the fire with his back to the
windows, and I was myself kneeling on the hearthrug and beginning
mechanically to pick up the scattered bills, when a honeyed voice joined
suddenly in our conversation.

“He thinks well of it, Mr. Romaine. He begs to join himself to that circle
of admirers which you indicate to exist already.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE DEVIL AND ALL AT AMERSHAM PLACE

Never did two human creatures get to their feet with more alacrity than the
lawyer and myself. We had locked and barred the main gates of the citadel;
but unhappily we had left open the bath-room sally-port; and here we found
the voice of the hostile trumpets sounding from within, and all our defences
taken in reverse. I took but the time to whisper Mr. Romaine in the ear:
“Here is another tableau for you!” at which he looked at me a moment with
a kind of pathos, as who should say, “Don’t hit a man when he’s down.”
Then I transferred my eyes to my enemy.

He had his hat on, a little on one side: it was a very tall hat, raked
extremely, and had a narrow curling brim. His hair was all curled out in
masses like an Italian mountebank—a most unpardonable fashion. He
sported a huge tippeted overcoat of frieze, such as watchmen wear, only the
inside was lined with costly furs, and he kept it half open to display the
exquisite linen, the many-coloured waistcoat, and the profuse jewellery of
watch-chains and brooches underneath. The leg and the ankle were turned
to a miracle. It is out of the question that I should deny the resemblance
altogether, since it has been remarked by so many different persons whom I
cannot reasonably accuse of a conspiracy. As a matter of fact, I saw little of
it and confessed to nothing. Certainly he was what some might call
handsome, of a pictorial, exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and
impudence: a man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a
race-meeting, or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and stared
at himself with admiration by the coal porters. Of his frame of mind at that
moment his face offered a lively if an unconscious picture. He was lividly
pale, and his lip was caught up in a smile that could almost be called a
snarl, of a sheer, arid malignity that appalled me and yet put me on my
mettle for the encounter. He looked me up and down, then bowed and took
off his hat to me.

“My cousin, I presume?” he said.

“I understand I have that honour,” I replied.

“The honour is mine,” said he, and his voice shook as he said it.

“I should make you welcome, I believe,” said I.

“Why?” he inquired. “This poor house has been my home for longer than
I care to claim. That you should already take upon yourself the duties of
host here is to be at unnecessary pains. Believe me, that part would be more
becomingly mine. And, by the way, I must not fail to offer you my little
compliment. It is a gratifying surprise to meet you in the dress of a
gentleman, and to see”—with a circular look upon the scattered bills—“that
your necessities have already been so liberally relieved.”

I bowed with a smile that was perhaps no less hateful than his own.

“There are so many necessities in this world,” said I. “Charity has to
choose. One gets relieved, and some other, no less indigent, perhaps
indebted, must go wanting.”

“Malice is an engaging trait,” said he.

“And envy, I think?” was my reply.

He must have felt that he was not getting wholly the better of this
passage at arms; perhaps even feared that he should lose command of his
temper, which he reined in throughout the interview as with a red-hot curb,
for he flung away from me at the word, and addressed the lawyer with
insulting arrogance.

“Mr. Romaine,” he said, “since when have you presumed to give orders
in this house?”

“I am not prepared to admit that I have given any,” replied Romaine;
“certainly none that did not fall in the sphere of my responsibilities.”

“By whose orders, then, am I denied entrance to my uncle’s room?” said
my cousin.

“By the doctor’s, sir,” replied Romaine; “and I think even you will admit
his faculty to give them.”

“Have a care, sir,” cried Alain. “Do not be puffed up with your position.
It is none so secure, Master Attorney. I should not wonder in the least if you
were struck off the rolls for this night’s work, and the next I should see of
you were when I flung you alms at a pothouse door to mend your ragged
elbows. The doctor’s orders? But I believe I am not mistaken! You have to-
night transacted business with the Count; and this needy young gentleman
has enjoyed the privilege of still another interview, in which (as I am
pleased to see) his dignity has not prevented his doing very well for
himself. I wonder that you should care to prevaricate with me so idly.”

“I will confess so much,” said Mr. Romaine, “if you call it prevarication.
The order in question emanated from the Count himself. He does not wish
to see you.”

“For which I must take the word of Mr. Daniel Romaine?” asked Alain.

“In default of any better,” said Romaine.

There was an instantaneous convulsion in my cousin’s face, and I
distinctly heard him gnash his teeth at this reply; but, to my surprise, he
resumed in tones of almost good-humour:

“Come, Mr. Romaine, do not let us be petty!” He drew in a chair and sat
down. “Understand you have stolen a march upon me. You have introduced
your soldier of Napoleon, and (how, I cannot conceive) he has been

apparently accepted with favour. I ask no better proof than the funds with
which I find him literally surrounded—I presume in consequence of some
extravagance of joy at the first sight of so much money. The odds are so far
in your favour, but the match is not yet won. Questions will arise of undue
influence, of sequestration, and the like: I have my witnesses ready. I tell it
you cynically, for you cannot profit by the knowledge; and, if the worst
come to the worst, I have good hopes of recovering my own and of ruining
you.”

“You do what you please,” answered Romaine; “but I give it you for a
piece of good advice, you had best do nothing in the matter. You will only
make yourself ridiculous; you will only squander money, of which you have
none too much, and reap public mortification.”

“Ah, but there you make the common mistake, Mr. Romaine!” returned
Alain. “You despise your adversary. Consider, if you please, how very
disagreeable I could make myself if I chose. Consider the position of your
protégé—an escaped prisoner! But I play a great game. I condemn such
petty opportunities.”

At this Romaine and I exchanged a glance of triumph. It seemed manifest
that Alain had as yet received no word of Clausel’s recapture and
denunciation. At the same moment the lawyer, thus relieved of the instancy
of his fear, changed his tactics. With a great air of unconcern, he secured the
newspaper, which still lay open before him on the table.

“I think, Monsieur Alain, that you labour under some illusion,” said he.
“Believe me, this is all beside the mark. You seem to be pointing to some
compromise. Nothing is further from my views. You suspect me of an
inclination to trifle with you, to conceal how things are going. I cannot, on
the other hand, be too early or too explicit in giving you information which
concerns you (I must say) capitally. Your great-uncle has to-night cancelled

his will, and made a new one in favour of your cousin Anne. Nay, and you
shall hear it from his own lips, if you choose! I will take so much upon me,”
said the lawyer, rising. “Follow me, if you please, gentlemen.”

Mr. Romaine led the way out of the room so briskly, and was so briskly
followed by Alain, that I had hard ado to get the remainder of the money
replaced and the despatch-box locked, and to overtake them, even by
running, ere they should be lost in that maze of corridors, my uncle’s house.
As it was, I went with a heart divided; and the thought of my treasure thus
left unprotected, save by a paltry lid and lock that any one might break or
pick open, put me in a perspiration whenever I had the time to remember it.
The lawyer brought us to a room, begged us to be seated while he should
hold a consultation with the doctor, and, slipping out of another door, left
Alain and myself closeted together.

Truly he had done nothing to ingratiate himself; his every word had been
steeped in unfriendliness, envy, and that contempt which (as it is born of
anger) it is possible to support without humiliation. On my part, I had been
little more conciliating; and yet I began to be sorry for this man, hired spy
as I knew him to be. It seemed to me less than decent that he should have
been brought up in the expectation of this great inheritance, and now, at the
eleventh hour, be tumbled forth out of the house door and left to himself,
his poverty, and his debts—those debts of which I had so ungallantly
reminded him so short a time before. And we were scarce left alone ere I
made haste to hang out a flag of truce.

“My cousin,” said I, “trust me, you will not find me inclined to be your
enemy.”

He paused in front of me—for he had not accepted the lawyer’s invitation
to be seated, but walked to and fro in the apartment—took a pinch of snuff,
and looked at me while he was taking it with an air of much curiosity.

“Is it even so?” said he. “Am I so far favoured by fortune as to have your
pity? Infinitely obliged, my cousin Anne! But these sentiments are not
always reciprocal, and I warn you that the day when I set my foot on your
neck, the spine shall break. Are you acquainted with the properties of the
spine?” he asked, with an insolence beyond qualification.

It was too much. “I am acquainted also with the properties of a pair of
pistols,” said I, toising him.

“No, no, no!” says he, holding up his finger. “I will take my revenge how
and when I please. We are enough of the same family to understand each
other, perhaps; and the reason why I have not had you arrested on your
arrival, why I had not a picket of soldiers in the first clump of evergreens, to
await and prevent your coming—I, who knew all, before whom that
pettifogger, Romaine, has been conspiring in broad daylight to supplant me
—is simply this: that I had not made up my mind how I was to take my
revenge.”

At that moment he was interrupted by the tolling of a bell. As we stood
surprised and listening, it was succeeded by the sound of many feet
trooping up the stairs and shuffling by the door of our room. Both, I believe,
had a great curiosity to set it open, which each, owing to the presence of the
other, resisted; and we waited instead in silence, and without moving, until
Romaine returned and bade us to my uncle’s presence.

He led the way by a little crooked passage, which brought us out in the
sick-room, and behind the bed. I believe I have forgotten to remark that the
Count’s chamber was of considerable dimensions. We beheld it now
crowded with the servants and dependants of the house, from the doctor and
the priest to Mr. Dawson and the housekeeper, from Dawson down to
Rowley and the last footman in white calves, the last plump chambermaid
in her clean gown and cap, and the last ostler in a stable waistcoat. This

large congregation of persons (and I was surprised to see how large it was)
had the appearance, for the most part, of being ill at ease and heartily
bewildered, standing on one foot, gaping like zanies, and those who were in
the corners nudging each other and grinning aside. My uncle, on the other
hand, who was raised higher than I had yet seen him on his pillows, wore an
air of really imposing gravity. No sooner had we appeared behind him than
he lifted his voice to a good loudness, and addressed the assemblage.

“I take you all to witness—can you hear me?—I take you all to witness
that I recognise as my heir and representative this gentleman, whom most of
you see for the first time, the Viscount Anne de Saint-Yves, my nephew of
the younger line. And I take you to witness at the same time that, for very
good reasons known to myself, I have discarded and disinherited this other
gentleman whom you all know, the Viscount de Saint-Yves. I have also to
explain the unusual trouble to which I have put you all—and, since your
supper was not over, I fear I may even say annoyance. It has pleased M.
Alain to make some threats of disputing my will, and to pretend that there
are among your number certain estimable persons who may be trusted to
swear as he shall direct them. It pleases me thus to put it out of his power
and to stop the mouths of his false witnesses. I am infinitely obliged by
your politeness, and I have the honour to wish you all a very good
evening.”

As the servants, still greatly mystified, crowded out of the sick-room
door, curtsying, pulling the forelock, scraping with the foot, and so on,
according to their degree, I turned and stole a look at my cousin. He had
borne this crushing public rebuke without change of countenance. He stood
now, very upright, with folded arms, and looking inscrutably at the roof of
the apartment. I could not refuse him at that moment the tribute of my
admiration. Still more so when, the last of the domestics having filed
through the doorway and left us alone with my great-uncle and the lawyer,

he took one step forward towards the bed, made a dignified reverence, and
addressed the man who had just condemned him to ruin.

“My lord,” said he, “you are pleased to treat me in a manner which my
gratitude, and your state, equally forbid me to call in question. It will be
only necessary for me to call your attention to the length of time in which I
have been taught to regard myself as your heir. In that position I judged it
only loyal to permit myself a certain scale of expenditure. If I am now to be
cut off with a shilling as the reward of twenty years of service, I shall be left
not only a beggar, but a bankrupt.”

Whether from the fatigue of his recent exertion, or by a well-inspired
ingenuity of hate, my uncle had once more closed his eyes; nor did he open
them now. “Not with a shilling,” he contented himself with replying; and
there stole, as he said it, a sort of smile over his face, that flickered there
conspicuously for the least moment of time, and then faded and left behind
the old impenetrable mask of years, cunning, and fatigue. There could be no
mistake: my uncle enjoyed the situation as he had enjoyed few things in the
last quarter of a century. The fires of life scarce survived in that frail body;
but hatred, like some immortal quality, was still erect and unabated.

Nevertheless my cousin persevered.

“I speak at a disadvantage,” he resumed. “My supplanter, with perhaps
more wisdom than delicacy, remains in the room,” and he cast a glance at
me that might have withered an oak tree.

I was only too willing to withdraw, and Romaine showed as much
alacrity to make way for my departure. But my uncle was not to be moved.
In the same breath of a voice, and still without opening his eyes, he bade me
remain.

“It is well,” said Alain. “I cannot then go on to remind you of the twenty
years that have passed over our heads in England, and the services I may
have rendered you in that time. It would be a position too odious. Your
lordship knows me too well to suppose I could stoop to such ignominy. I
must leave out all my defence—your lordship wills it so! I do not know
what are my faults; I know only my punishment, and it is greater than I
have the courage to face. My uncle, I implore your pity: pardon me so far;
do not send me for life into a debtors’ gaol—a pauper debtor.”

“Chat et vieux, pardonnez?” said my uncle, quoting from La Fontaine;
and then, opening a pale-blue eye full on Alain, he delivered with some
emphasis:

“La jeunesse se flatte et croit tout obtenir;
La vieillesse est impitoyable.”

The blood leaped darkly into Alain’s face. He turned to Romaine and me,
and his eyes flashed.

“It is your turn now,” he said. “At least it shall be prison for prison with
the two viscounts.”

“Not so, Mr. Alain, by your leave,” said Romaine. “There are a few
formalities to be considered first.”

But Alain was already striding towards the door.

“Stop a moment, stop a moment!” cried Romaine. “Remember your own
counsel not to despise an adversary.”

Alain turned.

“If I do not despise I hate you!” he cried, giving a loose to his passion.
“Be warned of that, both of you.”

“I understand you to threaten Monsieur le Vicomte Anne,” said the
lawyer. “Do you know, I would not do that. I am afraid, I am very much
afraid, if you were to do as you propose, you might drive me into
extremes.”

“You have made me a beggar and a bankrupt,” said Alain. “What extreme
is left?”

“I scarce like to put a name upon it in this company,” replied Romaine.
“But there are worse things than even bankruptcy, and worse places than a
debtors’ gaol.”

The words were so significantly said that there went a visible thrill
through Alain; sudden as a sword-stroke, he fell pale again.

“I do not understand you,” said he.

“O yes, you do,” returned Romaine. “I believe you understand me very
well. You must not suppose that all this time, while you were so very busy,
others were entirely idle. You must not fancy, because I am an Englishman,
that I have not the intelligence to pursue an inquiry. Great as is my regard
for the honour of your house, M. Alain de Saint-Yves, if I hear of you
moving directly or indirectly in this matter, I shall do my duty, let it cost
what it will: that is, I shall communicate the real name of the Buonapartist
spy who signs his letters Rue Grégoire de Tours.”

I confess my heart was already almost altogether on the side of my
insulted and unhappy cousin; and if it had not been before, it must have
been so now, so horrid was the shock with which he heard his infamy
exposed. Speech was denied him; he carried his hand to his neckcloth; he
staggered; I thought he must have fallen. I ran to help him, and at that he
revived, recoiled before me, and stood there with arms stretched forth as if
to preserve himself from the outrage of my touch.

“Hands off!” he somehow managed to articulate.

“You will now, I hope,” pursued the lawyer, without any change of voice,
“understand the position in which you are placed, and how delicately it
behoves you to conduct yourself. Your arrest hangs, if I may so express
myself, by a hair; and as you will be under the perpetual vigilance of myself
and my agents, you must look to it narrowly that you walk straight. Upon
the least dubiety, I will take action.” He snuffed, looking critically at the
tortured man. “And now let me remind you that your chaise is at the door.
This interview is agitating to his lordship—it cannot be agreeable for you—
and I suggest that it need not be further drawn out. It does not enter into the
views of your uncle, the Count, that you should again sleep under this
roof.”

As Alain turned and passed without a word or a sign from the apartment,
I instantly followed. I suppose I must be at bottom possessed of some
humanity; at least, this accumulated torture, this slow butchery of a man as
by quarters of rock, had wholly changed my sympathies. At that moment I
loathed both my uncle and the lawyer for their cold-blooded cruelty.

Leaning over the banisters, I was but in time to hear his hasty footsteps in
that hall that had been crowded with servants to honour his coming, and
was now left empty against his friendless departure. A moment later, and
the echoes rang, and the air whistled in my ears, as he slammed the door on
his departing footsteps. The fury of the concussion gave me (had one been
still wanted) a measure of the turmoil of his passions. In a sense I felt with
him; I felt how he would have gloried to slam that door on my uncle, the
lawyer, myself, and the whole crowd of those who had been witnesses to
his humiliation.

CHAPTER XX

AFTER THE STORM

No sooner was the house clear of my cousin than I began to reckon up,
ruefully enough, the probable results of what had passed. Here were a
number of pots broken, and it looked to me as if I should have to pay for
all! Here had been this proud, mad beast goaded and baited both publicly
and privately, till he could neither hear nor see nor reason; whereupon the
gate had been set open, and he had been left free to go and contrive
whatever vengeance he might find possible. I could not help thinking it was
a pity that, whenever I myself was inclined to be upon my good behaviour,
some friends of mine should always determine to play a piece of heroics
and cast me for the hero—or the victim—which is very much the same. The
first duty of heroics is to be of your own choosing. When they are not that,
they are nothing. And I assure you, as I walked back to my own room, I was
in no very complaisant humour: thought my uncle and Mr. Romaine to have
played knuckle-bones with my life and prospects; cursed them for it
roundly; had no wish more urgent than to avoid the pair of them; and was
quite knocked out of time, as they say in the ring, to find myself confronted
with the lawyer.

He stood on my hearthrug, leaning on the chimney-piece, with a gloomy,
thoughtful brow, as I was pleased to see, and not in the least as though he
were vain of the late proceedings.

“Well?” said I. “You have done it now!”

“Is he gone?” he asked.

“He is gone,” said I. “We shall have the devil to pay with him when he
comes back.”

“You are right,” said the lawyer, “and very little to pay him with but
flams and fabrications, like to-night’s.”

“To-night’s?” I repeated.

“Ay, to-night’s!” said he.

“To-night’s what?” I cried.

“To-night’s flams and fabrications.”

“God be good to me, sir,” said I, “have I something more to admire in
your conduct than ever I had suspected? You cannot think how you interest
me! That it was severe, I knew; I had already chuckled over that. But that it
should be false also! In what sense, dear sir?”

I believe I was extremely offensive as I put the question, but the lawyer
paid no heed.

“False in all senses of the word,” he replied seriously. “False in the sense
that they were not true, and false in the sense that they were not real; false
in the sense that I boasted, and in the sense that I lied. How can I arrest
him? Your uncle burned the papers! I told you so—but doubtless you have
forgotten—the day I first saw you in Edinburgh Castle. It was an act of
generosity; I have seen many of these acts, and always regretted—always
regretted! ‘That shall be his inheritance,’ he said, as the papers burned; he
did not mean that it should have proved so rich a one. How rich, time will
tell.”

“I beg your pardon a hundred thousand times, my dear sir, but it strikes
me you have the impudence—in the circumstances I may call it the
indecency—to appear cast down?”

“It is true,” said he: “I am. I am cast down. I am literally cast down. I feel
myself quite helpless against your cousin.”

“Now, really!” I asked. “Is this serious? And is it perhaps the reason why
you have gorged the poor devil with every species of insult? and why you
took such surprising pains to supply me with what I had so little need of—
another enemy? That you were helpless against him? ’Here is my last
missile,’ say you; ‘my ammunition is quite exhausted: just wait till I get the
last in—it will irritate, it cannot hurt him. There—you see!—he is furious
now, and I am quite helpless. One more prod, another kick: now he is a
mere lunatic! Stand behind me; I am quite helpless!’ Mr. Romaine, I am
asking myself as to the background or motive of this singular jest, and
whether the name of it should not be called treachery?”

“I can scarce wonder,” said he. “In truth it has been a singular business,
and we are very fortunate to be out of it so well. Yet it was not treachery:
no, no, Mr. Anne, it was not treachery; and if you will do me the favour to
listen to me for the inside of a minute, I shall demonstrate the same to you
beyond cavil.” He seemed to wake up to his ordinary briskness. “You see
the point?” he began. “He had not yet read the newspaper, but who could
tell when he might? He might have had that damned journal in his pocket,
and how should we know? We were—I may say, we are—at the mercy of
the merest twopenny accident.”

“Why, true,” said I: “I had not thought of that.”

“I warrant you,” cried Romaine, “you had supposed it was nothing to be
the hero of an interesting notice in the journals! You had supposed, as like
as not, it was a form of secrecy! But not so in the least. A part of England is
already buzzing with the name of Champdivers; a day or two more and the
mail will have carried it everywhere: so wonderful a machine is this of ours
for disseminating intelligence! Think of it! When my father was born——
but that is another story. To return: we had here the elements of such a
combustion as I dread to think of—your cousin and the journal. Let him but
glance an eye upon that column of print, and where were we? It is easy to

ask; not so easy to answer, my young friend. And let me tell you, this sheet
is the Viscount’s usual reading. It is my conviction he had it in his pocket.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said I. “I have been unjust. I did not appreciate
my danger.”

“I think you never do,” said he.

“But yet surely that public scene——” I began.

“It was madness. I quite agree with you,” Mr. Romaine interrupted. “But
it was your uncle’s orders, Mr. Anne, and what could I do? Tell him you
were the murderer of Goguelat? I think not.”

“No, sure!” said I. “That would but have been to make the trouble
thicker. We were certainly in a very ill posture.”

“You do not yet appreciate how grave it was,” he replied. “It was
necessary for you that your cousin should go, and go at once. You yourself
had to leave to-night under cover of darkness, and how could you have
done that with the Viscount in the next room? He must go, then; he must
leave without delay. And that was the difficulty.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Romaine, but could not my uncle have bidden him to
go?” I asked.

“Why, I see I must tell you that this is not so simple as it sounds,” he
replied. “You say this is your uncle’s house, and so it is. But to all effects
and purposes it is your cousin’s also. He has rooms here; has had them
coming on for thirty years now, and they are filled with a prodigious
accumulation of trash—stays, I dare say, and powder-puffs, and such
effeminate idiocy—to which none could dispute his title, even suppose any
one wanted to. We had a perfect right to bid him go, and he had a perfect
right to reply, ‘Yes, I will go, but not without my stays and cravats. I must

first get together the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine chestsful of insufferable
rubbish, that I have spent the last thirty years collecting—and may very
well spend the next thirty hours a-packing of.’ And what should we have
said to that?”

“By way of repartee?” I asked. “Two tall footmen and a pair of crabtree
cudgels, I suggest.”

“The Lord deliver me from the wisdom of laymen!” cried Romaine. “Put
myself in the wrong at the beginning of a lawsuit? No, indeed! There was
but one thing to do, and I did it, and burned my last cartridge in the doing of
it. I stunned him. And it gave us three hours, by which we should make
haste to profit; for if there is one thing sure, it is that he will be up to time
again to-morrow in the morning.”

“Well,” said I, “I own myself an idiot. Well do they say, An old soldier,
an old innocent! For I guessed nothing of all this.”

“And, guessing it, have you the same objections to leave England?” he
inquired.

“The same,” said I.

“It is indispensable,” he objected.

“And it cannot be,” I replied. “Reason has nothing to say in the matter;
and I must not let you squander any of yours. It will be enough to tell you
this is an affair of the heart.”

“Is it even so?” quoth Romaine, nodding his head. “And I might have
been sure of it. Place them in a hospital, put them in a gaol in yellow
overalls, do what you will, young Jessamy finds young Jenny. O, have it
your own way; I am too old a hand to argue with young gentlemen who
choose to fancy themselves in love; I have too much experience, thank you.

Only, be sure that you appreciate what you risk: the prison, the dock, the
gallows, and the halter—terribly vulgar circumstances, my young friend;
grim, sordid, earnest; no poetry in that!”

“And there I am warned,” I returned gaily. “No man could be warned
more finely or with a greater eloquence. And I am of the same opinion still.
Until I have again seen that lady, nothing shall induce me to quit Great
Britain. I have besides——”

And here I came to a full stop. It was upon my tongue to have told him
the story of the drovers, but at the first word of it my voice died in my
throat. There might be a limit to the lawyer’s toleration, I reflected. I had
not been so long in Britain altogether; for the most part of that time I had
been by the heels in limbo in Edinburgh Castle; and already I had confessed
to killing one man with a pair of scissors; and now I was to go on and plead
guilty to having settled another with a holly stick! A wave of discretion
went over me as cold and as deep as the sea.

“In short, sir, this is a matter of feeling,” I concluded, “and nothing will
prevent my going to Edinburgh.”

If I had fired a pistol in his ear he could not have been more startled.

“To Edinburgh?” he repeated. “Edinburgh? where the very paving-stones
know you!”

“Then is the murder out!” said I. “But, Mr. Romaine, is there not
sometimes safety in boldness? Is it not a common-place of strategy to get
where the enemy least expects you? And where would he expect me less?”

“Faith, there is something in that, too!” cried the lawyer. “Ay, certainly, a
great deal in that. All the witnesses drowned but one, and he safe in prison;
you yourself changed beyond recognition—let us hope—and walking the

streets of the very town you have illustrated by your—well, your
eccentricity! It is not badly combined, indeed!”

“You approve it, then?” said I.

“O, approve!” said he; “there is no question of approval. There is only
one course which I could approve, and that were to escape to France
instanter.”

“You do not wholly disapprove, at least?” I substituted.

“Not wholly; and it would not matter if I did,” he replied. “Go your own
way; you are beyond argument. And I am not sure that you will run more
danger by that course than by any other. Give the servants time to get to bed
and fall asleep, then take a country cross-road and walk, as the rhyme has it,
like blazes all night. In the morning take a chaise or take the mail at
pleasure, and continue your journey with all the decorum and reserve of
which you shall be found capable.”

“I am taking the picture in,” I said. “Give me time. ’Tis the tout ensemble
I must see: the whole as opposed to the details.”

“Mountebank!” he murmured.

“Yes, I have it now; and I see myself with a servant, and that servant is
Rowley,” said I.

“So as to have one more link with your uncle?” suggested the lawyer.
“Very judicious!”

“And, pardon me, but that is what it is,” I exclaimed. “Judicious is the
word. I am not making a deception fit to last for thirty years; I do not found
a palace in the living granite for the night. This is a shelter tent—a flying
picture—seen, admired, and gone again in the wink of an eye. What is

wanted, in short, is a trompe-l’œil that shall be good enough for twelve
hours at an inn: is it not so?”

“It is, and the objection holds. Rowley is but another danger,” said
Romaine.

“Rowley,” said I, “will pass as a servant from a distance—as a creature
seen poised on the dicky of a bowling chaise. He will pass at hand as a
smart, civil fellow one meets in the inn corridor, and looks back at, and
asks, and is told, ‘Gentleman’s servant in Number 4.’ He will pass, in fact,
all round, except with his personal friends! My dear sir, pray what do you
expect? Of course, if we meet my cousin, or if we meet anybody who took
part in the judicious exhibition of this evening, we are lost; and who’s
denying it? To every disguise, however good and safe, there is always the
weak point; you must always take (let us say—and to take a simile from
your own waistcoat pocket) a snuffboxful of risk. You’ll get it just as small
with Rowley as with anybody else. And the long and short of it is, the lad’s
honest, he likes me, I trust him; he is my servant, or nobody.”

“He might not accept,” said Romaine.

“I bet you a thousand pounds he does!” cried I. “But no matter; all you
have to do is to send him out to-night on this cross-country business, and
leave the thing to me. I tell you, he will be my servant, and I tell you, he
will do well.”

I had crossed the room, and was already overhauling my wardrobe as I
spoke.

“Well,” concluded the lawyer, with a shrug, “one risk with another: à la
guerre comme à la guerre, as you would say. Let the brat come and be
useful, at least.” And he was about to ring the bell when his eye was caught
by my researches in the wardrobe. “Do not fall in love with these coats,

waistcoats, cravats, and other panoply and accoutrements by which you are
now surrounded. You must not run the post as a dandy. It is not the fashion,
even.”

“You are pleased to be facetious, sir,” said I, “and not according to
knowledge. These clothes are my life, they are my disguise; and since I can
take but few of them, I were a fool indeed if I selected hastily! Will you
understand, once and for all, what I am seeking? To be invisible is the first
point; the second, to be invisible in a post-chaise and with a servant. Can
you not perceive the delicacy of the quest? Nothing must be too coarse,
nothing too fine; rien de voyant, rien qui détonne; so that I may leave
everywhere the inconspicuous image of a handsome young man of a good
fortune travelling in proper style, whom the landlord will forget in twelve
hours—and the chambermaid perhaps remember, God bless her! with a
sigh. This is the very fine art of dress.”

“I have practised it with success for fifty years,” said Romaine, with a
chuckle. “A black suit and a clean shirt is my infallible recipe.”

“You surprise me; I did not think you would be shallow!” said I,
lingering between two coats. “Pray, Mr. Romaine, have I your head? or did
you travel post and with a smartish servant?”

“Neither, I admit,” said he.

“Which change the whole problem,” I continued. “I have to dress for a
smartish servant and a Russia leather despatch-box.” That brought me to a
stand. I came over and looked at the box with a moment’s hesitation. “Yes,”
I resumed. “Yes, and for the despatch-box! It looks moneyed and landed; it
means I have a lawyer. It is an invaluable property. But I could have wished
it to hold less money. The responsibility is crushing. Should I not do more
wisely to take five hundred pounds, and intrust the remainder with you, Mr.
Romaine?”

“If you are sure you will not want it,” answered Romaine.

“I am far from sure of that,” cried I. “In the first place, as a philosopher.
This is the first time that I have been at the head of a large sum, and it is
conceivable—who knows himself?—that I may make it fly. In the second
place, as a fugitive. Who knows what I may need? The whole of it may be
inadequate. But I can always write for more.”

“You do not understand,” he replied. “I break off all communication with
you here and now. You must give me a power of attorney ere you start to-
night, and then be done with me trenchantly until better days.”

I believe I offered some objection.

“Think a little for once of me!” said Romaine. “I must not have seen you
before to-night. To-night we are to have had our only interview, and you are
to have given me the power; and to-night I am to have lost sight of you
again—I know not whither, you were upon business, it was none of my
affairs to question you! And this, you are to remark, in the interests of your
own safety much more than mine.”

“I am not even to write to you?” I said, a little bewildered.

“I believe I am cutting the last strand that connects you with common-
sense,” he replied. “But that is the plain English of it. You are not even to
write; and if you did, I would not answer.”

“A letter, however——” I began.

“Listen to me,” interrupted Romaine. “So soon as your cousin reads the
paragraph, what will he do? Put the police upon looking into my
correspondence! So soon as you write to me, in short, you write to Bow
Street; and if you will take my advice, you will date that letter from
France.”

“The devil!” said I, for I began suddenly to see that this might put me out
of the way of my business.

“What is it now?” says he.

“There will be more to be done, then, before we can part,” I answered.

“I give you the whole night,” said he. “So long as you are off ere
daybreak, I am content.”

“In short, Mr. Romaine,” said I, “I have had so much benefit of your
advice and services that I am loth to sever the connection, and would even
ask a substitute. I would be obliged for a letter of introduction to one of
your own cloth in Edinburgh—an old man for choice, very experienced,
very respectable, and very secret. Could you favour me with such a letter?”

“Why, no,” said he. “Certainly not. I will do no such thing, indeed.”

“It would be a great favour, sir,” I pleaded.

“It would be an unpardonable blunder,” he replied. “What? Give you a
letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose, I must forget
the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk of it no more.”

“You seem to be always in the right,” said I. “The letter would be out of
the question, I quite see that. But the lawyer’s name might very well have
dropped from you in the way of conversation; having heard him mentioned,
I might profit by the circumstance to introduce myself; and in this way my
business would be the better done, and you not in the least compromised.”

“What is this business?” said Romaine.

“I have not said that I had any,” I replied. “It might arise. This is only a
possibility that I must keep in view.”

“Well,” said he, with a gesture of the hands, “I mention Mr. Robbie; and
let that be an end of it!—Or wait!” he added, “I have it. Here is something
that will serve you for an introduction, and cannot compromise me.” And he
wrote his name and the Edinburgh lawyer’s address on a piece of card and
tossed it to me.

CHAPTER XXI

I BECOME THE OWNER OF A CLARET-COLOURED CHAISE

What with packing, signing papers, and partaking of an excellent cold
supper in the lawyer’s room, it was past two in the morning before we were
ready for the road. Romaine himself let us out of a window in a part of the
house known to Rowley: it appears it served as a kind of postern to the
servants’ hall, by which (when they were in the mind for a clandestine
evening) they would come regularly in and out; and I remember very well
the vinegar aspect of the lawyer on the receipt of this piece of information
—how he pursed his lips, jutted his eyebrows, and kept repeating, “This
must be seen to, indeed! this shall be barred to-morrow in the morning!” In
this preoccupation I believe he took leave of me without observing it; our
things were handed out; we heard the window shut behind us; and became
instantly lost in a horrid intricacy of blackness and the shadow of woods.

A little wet snow kept sleepily falling, pausing, and falling again; it
seemed perpetually beginning to snow and perpetually leaving off; and the
darkness was intense. Time and again we walked into trees; time and again
found ourselves adrift among garden borders or stuck like a ram in the

thicket. Rowley had possessed himself of the matches, and he was neither
to be terrified nor softened. “No, I will not, Mr. Anne, sir,” he would reply.
“You know he tell me to wait till we were over the ’ill. It’s only a little way
now. Why, and I thought you was a soldier, too!” I was at least a very glad
soldier when my valet consented at last to kindle a thieves’ match. From
this we easily lit the lantern: and thenceforward, through a labyrinth of
woodland paths, were conducted by its uneasy glimmer. Both booted and
great-coated, with tall hats much of a shape, and laden with booty in the
form of a despatch-box, a case of pistols, and two plump valises, I thought
we had very much the look of a pair of brothers returning from the sack of
Amersham Place.

We issued at last upon a country by-road where we might walk abreast
and without precaution. It was nine miles to Aylesbury, our immediate
destination; by a watch, which formed part of my new outfit, it should be
about half-past three in the morning; and as we did not choose to arrive
before daylight, time could not be said to press. I gave the order to march at
ease.

“Now, Rowley,” said I, “so far so good. You have come, in the most
obliging manner in the world, to carry these valises. The question is, what
next? What are we to do at Aylesbury? or, more particularly, what are you?
Thence, I go on a journey. Are you to accompany me?”

He gave a little chuckle. “That’s all settled already, Mr. Anne, sir,” he
replied. “Why, I’ve got my things here in the valise—a half a dozen shirts
and what not; I’m all ready, sir: just you lead on: you’ll see.”

“The devil you have!” said I. “You made pretty sure of your welcome.”

“If you please, sir,” said Rowley.

He looked up at me, in the light of the lantern, with a boyish shyness and
triumph that awoke my conscience. I could never let this innocent involve
himself in the perils and difficulties that beset my course, without some hint
of warning, which it was a matter of extreme delicacy to make plain enough
and not too plain.

“No, no,” said I; “you may think you have made a choice, but it was
blindfold, and you must make it over again. The Count’s service is a good
one; what are you leaving it for? Are you not throwing away the substance
for the shadow? No, do not answer me yet. You imagine that I am a
prosperous nobleman, just declared my uncle’s heir, on the threshold of the
best of good fortune, and, from the point of view of a judicious servant, a
jewel of a master to serve and stick to? Well, my boy, I am nothing of the
kind, nothing of the kind.”

As I said the words, I came to a full stop and held up the lantern to his
face. He stood before me, brilliantly illuminated on the background of
impenetrable night and falling snow, stricken to stone between his double
burden like an ass between two panniers, and gaping at me like a
blunderbuss. I had never seen a face so predestined to be astonished, or so
susceptible of rendering the emotion of surprise; and it tempted me as an
open piano tempts the musician.

“Nothing of the sort, Rowley,” I continued, in a churchyard voice. “These
are appearances, petty appearances. I am in peril, homeless, hunted. I count
scarce any one in England who is not my enemy. From this hour I drop my
name, my title; I become nameless; my name is proscribed. My liberty, my
life, hang by a hair. The destiny which you will accept, if you go forth with
me, is to be tracked by spies, to hide yourself under a false name, to follow
the desperate pretences and perhaps share the fate of a murderer with a
price upon his head.”

His face had been hitherto beyond expectation, passing from one depth to
another of tragic astonishment, and really worth paying to see; but at this it
suddenly cleared. “O, I ain’t afraid!” he said; and then, choking into
laughter, “why, I see it from the first!”

I could have beaten him. But I had so grossly overshot the mark that I
suppose it took me two good miles of road and half an hour of elocution to
persuade him I had been in earnest. In the course of which I became so
interested in demonstrating my present danger that I forgot all about my
future safety, and not only told him the story of Goguelat, but threw in the
business of the drovers as well, and ended by blurting out that I was a
soldier of Napoleon’s and a prisoner of war.

This was far from my views when I began; and it is a common complaint
of me that I have a long tongue. I believe it is a fault beloved by fortune.
Which of you considerate fellows would have done a thing at once so
foolhardy and so wise as to make a confidant of a boy in his ’teens, and
positively smelling of the nursery? And when had I cause to repent it?
There is none so apt as a boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties
such as mine. To the beginnings of virile common-sense he adds the last
lights of the child’s imagination; and he can fling himself into business with
that superior earnestness that properly belongs to play. And Rowley was a
boy made to my hand. He had a high sense of romance, and a secret cultus
for all soldiers and criminals. His travelling library consisted of a chap-
book life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the “Old Bailey Sessions
Papers” by Gurney the shorthand writer; and the choice depicts his
character to a hair. You can imagine how his new prospects brightened on a
boy of this disposition. To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a
soldier, and a murderer, rolled in one—to live by stratagems, disguises, and
false names, in an atmosphere of midnight and mystery so thick that you
could cut it with a knife—was really, I believe, more dear to him than his

meals, though he was a great trencherman, and something of a glutton
besides. For myself, as the peg by which all this romantic business hung, I
was simply idolised from that moment; and he would rather have sacrificed
his hand than surrendered the privilege of serving me.

We arranged the terms of our campaign, trudging amicably in the snow,
which now, with the approach of morning, began to fall to purpose. I chose
the name of Ramornie, I imagine from its likeness to Romaine; Rowley,
from an irresistible conversion of ideas, I dubbed Gammon. His distress
was laughable to witness; his own choice of an unassuming nickname had
been Claude Duval! We settled our procedure at the various inns where we
should alight, rehearsed our little manners like a piece of drill until it
seemed impossible we should ever be taken unprepared; and in all these
dispositions, you may be sure the despatch-box was not forgotten. Who was
to pick it up, who was to set it down, who was to remain beside it, who was
to sleep with it—there was no contingency omitted, all was gone into with
the thoroughness of a drill-sergeant on the one hand and a child with a new
plaything on the other.

“I say, wouldn’t it look queer if you and me was to come to the post-
house with all this luggage?” said Rowley.

“I dare say,” I replied. “But what else is to be done?”

“Well, now, sir—you hear me,” says Rowley. “I think it would look more
natural-like if you was to come to the post-house alone, and with nothing in
your ’ands—more like a gentleman, you know. And you might say that your
servant and baggage was a-waiting for you up the road. I think I could
manage, somehow, to make a shift with all them dratted things—leastways
if you was to give me a ’and up with them at the start.”

“And I would see you far enough before I allowed you to try, Mr.
Rowley!” I cried. “Why, you would be quite defenceless! A footpad that

was an infant child could rob you. And I should probably come driving by
to find you in a ditch with your throat cut. But there is something in your
idea, for all that; and I propose we put it in execution no farther forward
than the next corner of a lane.”

Accordingly, instead of continuing to aim for Aylesbury, we headed by
cross-roads for some point to the northward of it, whither I might assist
Rowley with the baggage, and where I might leave him to await my return
in the post-chaise.

It was snowing to purpose, the country all white, and ourselves walking
snowdrifts, when the first glimmer of the morning showed us an inn upon
the highwayside. Some distance off, under the shelter of the corner of the
road and a clump of trees, I loaded Rowley with the whole of our
possessions, and watched him till he staggered into safety to the doors of
the “Green Dragon,” which was the sign of the house. Thence I walked
briskly into Aylesbury, rejoicing in my freedom and the causeless good
spirits that belong to a snowy morning; though, to be sure, long before I had
arrived the snow had again ceased to fall, and the eaves of Aylesbury were
smoking in the level sun. There was an accumulation of gigs and chaises in
the yard, and a great bustle going forward in the coffee-room and about the
doors of the inn. At these evidences of so much travel on the road I was
seized with a misgiving lest it should be impossible to get horses, and I
should be detained in the precarious neighbourhood of my cousin. Hungry
as I was, I made my way first of all to the postmaster, where he stood—a
big, athletic, horsey-looking man, blowing into a key in the corner of the
yard.

On my making my modest request, he awoke from his indifference into
what seemed passion.

“A po’-shay and ’osses!” he cried. “Do I look as if I ’ad a po’-shay and
’osses? Damn me, if I ’ave such a thing on the premises. I don’t make
’osses and chaises—I ’ire ’em. You might be God Almighty!” said he; and
instantly, as if he had observed me for the first time, he broke off, and
lowered his voice into the confidential. “Why, now that I see you are a
gentleman,” said he, “I’ll tell you what! If you like to buy, I have the article
to fit you. Second-’and shay by Lycett, of London. Latest style; good as
new. Superior fittin’s, net on the roof, baggage platform, pistol ’olsters—the
most com-plete and the most gen-teel turn-out I ever see! The ’ole for
seventy-five pound! It’s as good as givin’ her away!”

“Do you propose I should trundle it myself, like a hawker’s barrow?”
said I. “Why, my good man, if I had to stop here, anyway, I should prefer to
buy a house and garden!”

“Come and look at her!” he cried; and, with the word, links his arm in
mine and carries me to the outhouse where the chaise was on view.

It was just the sort of chaise that I had dreamed of for my purpose:
eminently rich, inconspicuous, and genteel; for, though I thought the
postmaster no great authority, I was bound to agree with him so far. The
body was painted a dark claret, and the wheels an invisible green. The lamp
and glasses were bright as silver; and the whole equipage had an air of
privacy and reserve that seemed to repel inquiry and disarm suspicion. With
a servant like Rowley, and a chaise like this, I felt that I could go from the
Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s House amid a population of bowing ostlers.
And I suppose I betrayed in my manner the degree in which the bargain
tempted me.

“Come,” cried the postmaster—“I’ll make it seventy, to oblige a friend!”

“The point is: the horses,” said I.

“Well,” said he, consulting his watch, “it’s now gone the ’alf after eight.
What time do you want her at the door?”

“Horses and all?” said I.

“’Osses and all!” says he. “One good turn deserves another. You give me
seventy pound for the shay, and I’ll ’oss it for you. I told you I didn’t make
’osses; but I can make ’em, to oblige a friend.”

What would you have? It was not the wisest thing in the world to buy a
chaise within a dozen miles of my uncle’s house; but in this way I got my
horses for the next stage. And by any other it appeared that I should have to
wait. Accordingly I paid the money down—perhaps twenty pounds too
much, though it was certainly a well-made and well-appointed vehicle—
ordered it round in half an hour, and proceeded to refresh myself with
breakfast.

The table to which I sat down occupied the recess of a bay-window, and
commanded a view of the front of the inn, where I continued to be amused
by the successive departures of travellers—the fussy and the offhand, the
niggardly and the lavish—all exhibiting their different characters in that
diagnostic moment of the farewell: some escorted to the stirrup or the
chaise door by the chamberlain, the chambermaids, and the waiters almost
in a body, others moving off under a cloud, without human countenance. In
the course of this I became interested in one for whom this ovation began to
assume the proportions of a triumph; not only the under-servants, but the
barmaid, the landlady, and my friend the postmaster himself, crowding
about the steps to speed his departure. I was aware, at the same time, of a
good deal of merriment, as though the traveller were a man of a ready wit,
and not too dignified to air it in that society. I leaned forward with a lively
curiosity; and the next moment I had blotted myself behind the teapot. The
popular traveller had turned to wave a farewell; and behold! he was no

other than my cousin Alain. It was a change of the sharpest from the angry,
pallid man I had seen at Amersham Place. Ruddy to a fault, illuminated
with vintages, crowned with his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me
for an instant, the perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious
popularity and insufferable condescension. He reminded me at once of a
royal duke, of an actor turned a little elderly, and of a blatant bagman who
should have been the illegitimate son of a gentleman. A moment after he
was gliding noiselessly on the road to London.

I breathed again. I recognised, with heartfelt gratitude, how lucky I had
been to go in by the stable-yard instead of the hostelry door, and what a fine
occasion of meeting my cousin I had lost by the purchase of the claret-
coloured chaise! The next moment I remembered that there was a waiter
present. No doubt but he must have observed when I crouched behind the
breakfast equipage; no doubt but he must have commented on this unusual
and undignified behaviour; and it was essential that I should do something
to remove the impression.

“Waiter!” said I, “that was the nephew of Count Carwell that just drove
off, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir: Viscount Carwell we calls him,” he replied.

“Ah, I thought as much,” said I. “Well, well, damn all these Frenchmen,
say I!”

“You may say so indeed, sir,” said the waiter. “They ain’t not to say in
the same field with our ’ome-raised gentry.”

“Nasty tempers?” I suggested.

“Beas’ly temper, sir, the Viscount ’ave,” said the waiter with feeling.
“Why, no longer agone than this morning, he was sitting breakfasting and
reading in his paper. I suppose, sir, he come on some pilitical information,

or it might be about ’orses, but he raps his ’and upon the table sudden and
calls for curaçoa. It gave me quite a turn, it did; he did it that sudden and
’ard. Now, sir, that may be manners in France, but hall I can say is, that I’m
not used to it.”

“Reading the paper, was he?” said I. “What paper, eh?”

“Here it is, sir,” exclaimed the waiter. “Seems like as if he’d dropped it.”

And picking it off the floor he presented it to me.

I may say that I was quite prepared, that I already knew what to expect;
but at sight of the cold print my heart stopped beating. There it was: the
fulfilment of Romaine’s apprehension was before me; the paper was laid
open at the capture of Clausel. I felt as if I could take a little curaçoa
myself, but on second thoughts called for brandy. It was badly wanted; and
suddenly I observed the waiter’s eye to sparkle, as it were, with some
recognition; made certain he had remarked the resemblance between me
and Alain; and became aware—as by a revelation—of the fool’s part I had
been playing. For I had now managed to put my identification beyond a
doubt, if Alain should choose to make his inquiries at Aylesbury: and, as if
that were not enough, I had added, at an expense of seventy pounds, a clue
by which he might follow me through the length and breadth of England, in
the shape of the claret-coloured chaise! That elegant equipage (which I
began to regard as little better than a claret-coloured ante-room to the
hangman’s cart) coming presently to the door, I left my breakfast in the
middle and departed; posting to the north as diligently as my cousin Alain
was posting to the south, and putting my trust (such as it was) in an
opposite direction and equal speed.

CHAPTER XXII

CHARACTER AND ACQUIREMENTS OF MR. ROWLEY

I am not certain that I had ever really appreciated before that hour the
extreme peril of the adventure on which I was embarked. The sight of my
cousin, the look of his face—so handsome, so jovial at the first sight, and
branded with so much malignity as you saw it on the second—with his
hyperbolical curls in order, with his neckcloth tied as if for the conquests of
love, setting forth (as I had no doubt in the world he was doing) to clap the
Bow Street runners on my trail, and cover England with handbills, each
dangerous as a loaded musket, convinced me for the first time that the affair
was no less serious than death. I believe it came to a near touch whether I
should not turn the horses’ heads at the next stage and make directly for the
coast. But I was now in the position of a man who should have thrown his
gage into the den of lions; or, better still, like one who should have
quarrelled overnight under the influence of wine, and now, at daylight, in a
cold winter’s morning, and humbly sober, must make good his words. It is
not that I thought any the less, or any the less warmly, of Flora. But, as I
smoked a grim segar that morning in a corner of the chaise, no doubt I
considered, in the first place, that the letter-post had been invented, and
admitted privately to myself, in the second, that it would have been highly
possible to write her on a piece of paper, seal it, and send it skimming by
the mail, instead of going personally into these egregious dangers, and
through a country that I beheld crowded with gibbets and Bow Street
officers. As for Sim and Candlish, I doubt if they crossed my mind.

At the “Green Dragon” Rowley was waiting on the doorsteps with the
luggage, and really was bursting with unpalatable conversation.

“Who do you think we’ve ’ad ’ere, sir?” he began breathlessly, as the
chaise drove off. “Red Breasts”; and he nodded his head portentously.

“Red Breasts?” I repeated, for I stupidly did not understand at the
moment an expression I had often heard.

“Ah!” said he. “Red weskits. Runners. Bow Street runners. Two on ’em,
and one was Lavender himself! I hear the other say quite plain, ‘Now, Mr.
Lavender, if you’re ready.’ They was breakfasting as nigh me as I am to that
post-boy. They’re all right; they ain’t after us. It’s a forger; and I didn’t send
them off on a false scent—O no! I thought there was no use in having them
over our way; so I give them ‘very valuable information,’ Mr. Lavender
said, and tipped me a tizzy for myself; and they’re off to Luton. They
showed me the ’andcuffs, too—the other one did—and he clicked the
dratted things on my wrist; and I tell you I believe I nearly went off in a
swound! There’s something so beastly in the feel of them! Begging your
pardon, Mr. Anne,” he added, with one of his delicious changes from the
character of the confidential schoolboy into that of the trained, respectful
servant.

Well, I must not be proud! I cannot say I found the subject of handcuffs
to my fancy; and it was with more asperity than was needful that I reproved
him for the slip about the name.

“Yes, Mr. Ramornie,” says he, touching his hat. “Begging your pardon,
Mr. Ramornie. But I’ve been very piticular, sir, up to now; and you may
trust me to be very piticular in the future. It were only a slip, sir.”

“My good boy,” said I, with the most imposing severity, “there must be
no slips. Be so good as to remember that my life is at stake.”

I did not embrace the occasion of telling him how many I had made
myself. It is my principle that an officer must never be wrong. I have seen

two divisions beating their brains out for a fortnight against a worthless and
quite impregnable castle in a pass: I knew we were only doing it for
discipline, because the General had said so at first, and had not yet found
any way out of his own words; and I highly admired his force of character,
and throughout these operations thought my life exposed in a very good
cause. With fools and children, which included Rowley, the necessity was
even greater. I proposed to myself to be infallible; and even when he
expressed some wonder at the purchase of the claret-coloured chaise, I put
him promptly in his place. In our situation, I told him, everything had to be
sacrificed to appearances; doubtless, in a hired chaise, we should have had
more freedom, but look at the dignity! I was so positive, that I had
sometimes almost convinced myself. Not for long, you may be certain! This
detestable conveyance always appeared to me to be laden with Bow Street
officers, and to have a placard upon the back of it publishing my name and
crimes. If I had paid seventy pounds to get the thing, I should not have
stuck at seven hundred to be safely rid of it.

And if the chaise was a danger, what an anxiety was the despatch-box
and its golden cargo! I had never had a care but to draw my pay and spend
it; I had lived happily in the regiment, as in my father’s house, fed by the
great Emperor’s commissariat as by ubiquitous doves of Elijah—or, my
faith! if anything went wrong with the commissariat, helping myself with
the best grace in the world from the next peasant! And now I began to feel
at the same time the burthen of riches and the fear of destitution. There
were ten thousand pounds in the despatch-box, but I reckoned in French
money, and had two hundred and fifty thousand agonies; I kept it under my
hand all day, I dreamed of it at night. In the inns, I was afraid to go to
dinner and afraid to go to sleep. When I walked up a hill I durst not leave
the doors of the claret-coloured chaise. Sometimes I would change the
disposition of the funds: there were days when I carried as much as five or
six thousand pounds on my own person, and only the residue continued to

voyage in the treasure-chest—days when I bulked all over like my cousin,
crackled to a touch with bank paper, and had my pockets weighed to
bursting-point with sovereigns. And there were other days when I wearied
of the thing—or grew ashamed of it—and put all the money back where it
had come from: there let it take its chance, like better people! In short, I set
Rowley a poor example of consistency, and, in philosophy, none at all.

Little he cared! All was one to him so long as he was amused, and I never
knew any one amused more easily. He was thrillingly interested in life,
travel, and his own melodramatic position. All day he would be looking
from the chaise windows with ebullitions of gratified curiosity, that were
sometimes justified and sometimes not, and that (taken altogether) it
occasionally wearied me to be obliged to share. I can look at horses, and I
can look at trees too, although not fond of it. But why should I look at a
lame horse, or a tree that was like the letter Y? What exhilaration could I
feel in viewing a cottage that was the same colour as “the second from the
miller’s” in some place where I had never been, and of which I had not
previously heard? I am ashamed to complain, but there were moments when
my juvenile and confidential friend weighed heavy on my hands. His cackle
was indeed almost continuous, but it was never unamiable. He showed an
amiable curiosity when he was asking questions; an amiable guilelessness
when he was conferring information. And both he did largely. I am in a
position to write the biographies of Mr. Rowley, Mr. Rowley’s father and
mother, his Aunt Eliza, and the miller’s dog; and nothing but pity for the
reader and some misgivings as to the law of copyright prevail on me to
withhold them.

A general design to mould himself upon my example became early
apparent, and I had not the heart to check it. He began to mimic my
carriage; he acquired, with servile accuracy, a little manner I had of
shrugging the shoulders; and I may say it was by observing it in him that I

first discovered it in myself. One day it came out by chance that I was of the
Catholic religion. He became plunged in thought, at which I was gently
glad. Then suddenly—

“Odd-rabbit it! I’ll be Catholic too!” he broke out. “You must teach me it,
Mr. Anne—I mean, Ramornie.”

I dissuaded him: alleging that he would find me very imperfectly
informed as to the grounds and doctrines of the Church, and that, after all,
in the matter of religions, it was a very poor idea to change. “Of course, my
Church is the best,” said I; “but that is not the reason why I belong to it; I
belong to it because it was the faith of my house. I wish to take my chances
with my own people, and so should you. If it is a question of going to hell,
go to hell like a gentleman with your ancestors.”

“Well, it wasn’t that,” he admitted. “I don’t know that I was exactly
thinking of hell. Then there’s the inquisition, too. That’s rather a cawker,
you know.”

“And I don’t believe you were thinking of anything in the world,” said I
—which put a period to his respectable conversion.

He consoled himself by playing for a while on a cheap flageolet, which
was one of his diversions, and to which I owed many intervals of peace.
When he first produced it, in the joints, from his pocket, he had the
duplicity to ask me if I played upon it. I answered, no; and he put the
instrument away with a sigh and the remark that he had thought I might. For
some while he resisted the unspeakable temptation, his fingers visibly
itching and twittering about his pocket, even his interest in the landscape
and in sporadic anecdote entirely lost. Presently the pipe was in his hands
again; he fitted, unfitted, refitted, and played upon it in dumb show for
some time.

“I play it myself a little,” says he.

“Do you?” said I, and yawned.

And then he broke down.

“Mr. Ramornie, if you please, would it disturb you, sir, if I was to play a
chune?” he pleaded. And from that hour, the tootling of the flageolet
cheered our way.

He was particularly keen on the details of battles, single combats,
incidents of scouting parties, and the like. These he would make haste to
cap with some of the exploits of Wallace, the only hero with whom he had
the least acquaintance. His enthusiasm was genuine and pretty. When he
learned we were going to Scotland, “Well, then,” he broke out, “I’ll see
where Wallace lived!” And presently after, he fell to moralising. “It’s a
strange thing, sir,” he began, “that I seem somehow to have always the
wrong sow by the ear. I’m English after all, and I glory in it. My eye! don’t
I, though! Let some of your Frenchies come over here to invade, and you’ll
see whether or not. O yes, I’m English to the backbone, I am. And yet look
at me! I got hold of this ’ere William Wallace and took to him right off; I
never heard of such a man before! And then you came along, and I took to
you. And both the two of you were my born enemies! I—I beg your pardon,
Mr. Ramornie, but would you mind it very much if you didn’t go for to do
anything against England”—he brought the word out suddenly, like
something hot—“when I was along of you?”

I was more affected than I can tell.

“Rowley,” I said, “you need have no fear. By how much I love my own
honour, by so much I will take care to protect yours. We are but fraternising
at the outposts, as soldiers do. When the bugle calls, my boy, we must face

each other, one for England, one for France, and may God defend the
right!”

So I spoke at the moment; but for all my brave airs, the boy had wounded
me in a vital quarter. His words continued to ring in my hearing. There was
no remission all day of my remorseful thoughts; and that night (when we
lay at Lichfield, I believe) there was no sleep for me in my bed. I put out the
candle and lay down with a good resolution; and in a moment all was light
about me like a theatre, and I saw myself upon the stage of it playing
ignoble parts. I remembered France and my Emperor, now depending on the
arbitrament of war, bent down, fighting on their knees and with their teeth
against so many and such various assailants. And I burned with shame to be
here in England, cherishing an English fortune, pursuing an English
mistress, and not there, to handle a musket in my native fields, and to
manure them with my body if I fell. I remembered that I belonged to
France. All my fathers had fought for her, and some had died; the voice in
my throat, the sight of my eyes, the tears that now sprang there, the whole
man of me, was fashioned of French earth and born of a French mother; I
had been tended and caressed by a succession of the daughters of France,
the fairest, the most ill-starred; I had fought and conquered shoulder to
shoulder with her sons. A soldier, a noble, of the proudest and bravest race
in Europe, it had been left to the prattle of a hobbledehoy lackey in an
English chaise to recall me to the consciousness of duty.

When I saw how it was I did not lose time in indecision. The old classical
conflict of love and honour being once fairly before me, it did not cost me a
thought. I was a Saint-Yves de Kéroual; and I decided to strike off on the
morrow for Wakefield and Burchell Fenn, and embark, as soon as it should
be morally possible, for the succour of my downtrodden fatherland and my
beleaguered Emperor. Pursuant on this resolve, I leaped from bed, made a
light, and as the watchman was crying half-past two in the dark streets of

Lichfield, sat down to pen a letter of farewell to Flora. And then—whether
it was the sudden chill of the night, whether it came by association of ideas
from the remembrance of Swanston Cottage, I know not, but there appeared
before me—to the barking of sheep-dogs—a couple of snuffy and
shambling figures, each wrapped in a plaid, each armed with a rude staff;
and I was immediately bowed down to have forgotten them so long, and of
late to have thought of them so cavalierly.

Sure enough, there was my errand! As a private person I was neither
French nor English; I was something else first; a loyal gentleman, an honest
man. Sim and Candlish must not be left to pay the penalty of my
unfortunate blow. They held my honour tacitly pledged to succour them;
and it is a sort of stoical refinement entirely foreign to my nature to set the
political obligation above the personal and private. If France fell in the
interval for the lack of Anne de Saint-Yves, fall she must! But I was both
surprised and humiliated to have had so plain a duty bound upon me for so
long—and for so long to have neglected and forgotten it. I think any brave
man will understand me when I say that I went to bed and to sleep with a
conscience very much relieved, and woke again in the morning with a light
heart. The very danger of the enterprise reassured me; to save Sim and
Candlish (suppose the worst to come to the worst) it would be necessary for
me to declare myself in a court of justice, with consequences which I did
not dare to dwell upon; it could never be said that I had chosen the cheap
and the easy—only that in a very perplexing competition of duties I had
risked my life for the most immediate.

We resumed the journey with more diligence: thenceforward posted day
and night; did not halt beyond what was necessary for meals; and the
postillions were excited by gratuities, after the habit of my cousin Alain.
For two-pence I could have gone farther and taken four horses; so extreme
was my haste, running as I was before the terrors of an awakened

conscience. But I feared to be conspicuous. Even as it was, we attracted
only too much attention, with our pair and that white elephant, the seventy-
pounds-worth of claret-coloured chaise.

Meanwhile I was ashamed to look Rowley in the face. The young shaver
had contrived to put me wholly in the wrong; he had cost me a night’s rest
and a severe and healthful humiliation; and I was grateful and embarrassed
in his society. This would never do; it was contrary to all my ideas of
discipline; if the officer has to blush before the private, or the master before
the servant, nothing is left to hope for but discharge or death. I hit upon the
idea of teaching him French; and accordingly, from Lichfield, I became the
distracted master, and he the scholar—how shall I say? indefatigable, but
uninspired. His interest never flagged. He would hear the same word twenty
times with profound refreshment, mispronounce it in several different ways,
and forget it again with magical celerity. Say it happened to be stirrup. “No,
I don’t seem to remember that word, Mr. Anne,” he would say: “it don’t
seem to stick to me, that word don’t.” And then, when I had told it him
again, “Étrier!” he would cry. “To be sure! I had it on the tip of my tongue.
Éterier!” (going wrong already, as if by a fatal instinct). “What will I
remember it by, now? Why, interior, to be sure! I’ll remember it by its
being something that ain’t in the interior of a horse.” And when next I had
occasion to ask him the French for stirrup, it was a toss-up whether he had
forgotten all about it, or gave me exterior for an answer. He was never a
hair discouraged. He seemed to consider that he was covering the ground at
a normal rate. He came up smiling day after day. “Now, sir, shall we do our
French?” he would say; and I would put questions, and elicit copious
commentary and explanation, but never the shadow of an answer. My hands
fell to my sides; I could have wept to hear him. When I reflected that he had
as yet learned nothing, and what a vast deal more there was for him to learn,
the period of these lessons seemed to unroll before me vast as eternity, and I
saw myself a teacher of a hundred, and Rowley a pupil of ninety, still

hammering on the rudiments! The wretched boy, I should say, was quite
unspoiled by the inevitable familiarities of the journey. He turned out at
each stage the pink of serving-lads, deft, civil, prompt, attentive, touching
his hat like an automaton, raising the status of Mr. Ramornie in the eyes of
all the inn by his smiling service, and seeming capable of anything in the
world but the one thing I had chosen—learning French!

CHAPTER XXIII

THE ADVENTURE OF THE RUNAWAY COUPLE

The country had for some time back been changing in character. By a
thousand indications I could judge that I was again drawing near to
Scotland. I saw it written in the face of the hills, in the growth of the trees,
and in the glint of the waterbrooks that kept the high-road company. It
might have occurred to me, also, that I was, at the same time, approaching a
place of some fame in Britain—Gretna Green. Over these same leagues of
road—which Rowley and I now traversed in the claret-coloured chaise, to
the note of the flageolet and the French lesson—how many pairs of lovers
had gone bowling northwards to the music of sixteen scampering
horseshoes; and how many irate persons, parents, uncles, guardians, evicted
rivals, had come tearing after, clapping the frequent red face to the chaise-
window, lavishly shedding their gold about the post-houses, sedulously
loading and reloading, as they went, their avenging pistols! But I doubt if I
had thought of it at all, before a wayside hazard swept me into the thick of
an adventure of this nature; and I found myself playing providence with

other people’s lives, to my own admiration at the moment—and
subsequently to my own brief but passionate regret.

At rather an ugly corner of an uphill reach I came on the wreck of a
chaise lying on one side in the ditch, a man and a woman in animated
discourse in the middle of the road, and the two postillions, each with his
pair of horses, looking on and laughing from the saddle.

“Morning breezes! here’s a smash!” cried Rowley, pocketing his
flageolet in the middle of the “Tight Little Island.”

I was perhaps more conscious of the moral smash than the physical—
more alive to broken hearts than to broken chaises; for, as plain as the sun at
morning, there was a screw loose in this runaway match. It is always a bad
sign when the lower classes laugh: their taste in humour is both poor and
sinister; and for a man, running the posts with four horses, presumably with
open pockets, and in the company of the most entrancing little creature
conceivable, to have come down so far as to be laughed at by his own
postillions, was only to be explained on the double hypothesis that he was a
fool and no gentleman.

I have said they were man and woman. I should have said man and child.
She was certainly not more than seventeen, pretty as an angel, just plump
enough to damn a saint, and dressed in various shades of blue, from her
stockings to her saucy cap, in a kind of taking gamut, the top note of which
she flung me in a beam from her too appreciative eye. There was no doubt
about the case: I saw it all. From a boarding-school, a black-board, a piano,
and Clementi’s “Sonatinas,” the child had made a rash adventure upon life
in the company of a half-bred hawbuck; and she was already not only
regretting it, but expressing her regret with point and pungency.

As I alighted they both paused with that unmistakable air of being
interrupted in a scene. I uncovered to the lady and placed my services at

their disposal.

It was the man who answered. “There’s no use in shamming, sir,” said
he. “This lady and I have run away, and her father’s after us: road to Gretna,
sir. And here have these nincompoops spilt us in the ditch and smashed the
chaise!”

“Very provoking,” said I.

“I don’t know when I’ve been so provoked!” cried he, with a glance
down the road, of mortal terror.

“The father is no doubt very much incensed?” I pursued civilly.

“O God!” cried the hawbuck. “In short, you see, we must get out of this.
And I’ll tell you what—it may seem cool, but necessity has no law—if you
would lend us your chaise to the next post-house, it would be the very
thing, sir.”

“I confess it seems cool,” I replied.

“What’s that you say, sir?” he snapped.

“I was agreeing with you,” said I. “Yes, it does seem cool: and what is
more to the point, it seems unnecessary. This thing can be arranged in a
more satisfactory manner otherwise, I think. You can doubtless ride?”

This opened a door on the matter of their previous dispute, and the fellow
appeared life-sized in his true colours. “That’s what I’ve been telling her:
that, damn her! she must ride!” he broke out. “And if the gentleman’s of the
same mind, why, damme, you shall!”

As he said so, he made a snatch at her wrist, which she evaded with
horror.

I stepped between them.

“No, sir,” said I; “the lady shall not.”

He turned on me raging. “And who are you to interfere?” he roared.

“There is here no question of who I am,” I replied. “I may be the devil or
the Archbishop of Canterbury for what you know, or need know. The point
is that I can help you—it appears that nobody else can: and I will tell you
how I propose to do it. I will give the lady a seat in my chaise, if you will
return the compliment by allowing my servant to ride one of your horses.”

I thought he would have sprung at my throat.

“You have always the alternative before you: to wait here for the arrival
of papa,” I added.

And that settled him. He cast another haggard look down the road, and
capitulated.

“I am sure, sir, the lady is very much obliged to you,” he said, with an ill
grace.

I gave her my hand; she mounted like a bird into the chaise; Rowley,
grinning from ear to ear, closed the door behind us; the two impudent
rascals of post-boys cheered and laughed aloud as we drove off; and my
own postillion urged his horses at once into a rattling trot. It was plain I was
supposed by all to have done a very dashing act, and ravished the bride
from the ravisher.

In the meantime I stole a look at the little lady. She was in a state of
pitiable discomposure, and her arms shook on her lap in her black lace
mittens.

“Madam——” I began.

And she, in the same moment, finding her voice: “O, what must you
think of me!”

“Madam,” said I, “what must any gentleman think when he sees youth,
beauty, and innocence in distress? I wish I could tell you that I was old
enough to be your father; I think we must give that up,” I continued, with a
smile. “But I will tell you something about myself which ought to do as
well, and to set that little heart at rest in my society. I am a lover. May I say
it of myself—for I am not quite used to all the niceties of English—that I
am a true lover? There is one whom I admire, adore, obey; she is no less
good than she is beautiful; if she were here, she would take you to her arms:
conceive that she has sent me—that she has said to me, ‘Go, be her
knight!’”

“O, I know she must be sweet, I know she must be worthy of you!” cried
the little lady. “She would never forget female decorum—nor make the
terrible erratum I’ve done!”

And at this she lifted up her voice and wept.

This did not forward matters: it was in vain that I begged her to be more
composed and to tell me a plain, consecutive tale of her misadventures; but
she continued instead to pour forth the most extraordinary mixture of the
correct school miss and the poor untutored little piece of womanhood in a
false position—of engrafted pedantry and incoherent nature.

“I am certain it must have been judicial blindness,” she sobbed. “I can’t
think how I didn’t see it, but I didn’t; and he isn’t, is he? And then a curtain
rose.... O, what a moment was that! But I knew at once that you were; you
had but to appear from your carriage, and I knew it. O, she must be a
fortunate young lady! And I have no fear with you, none—a perfect
confidence.”

“Madam,” said I, “a gentleman.”

“That’s what I mean—a gentleman,” she exclaimed. “And he—and that
—he isn’t. O, how shall I dare meet father!” And disclosing to me her tear-
stained face, and opening her arms with a tragic gesture: “And I am quite
disgraced before all the young ladies, my school-companions!” she added.

“O, not so bad as that!” I cried. “Come, come, you exaggerate, my dear
Miss ——? Excuse me if I am too familiar: I have not yet heard your
name.”

“My name is Dorothy Greensleeves, sir: why should I conceal it? I fear it
will only serve to point an adage to future generations, and I had meant so
differently! There was no young female in the county more emulous to be
thought well of than I. And what a fall was there! O, dear me, what a
wicked, piggish donkey of a girl I have made of myself, to be sure! And
there is no hope! O, Mr.——”

And at that she paused and asked my name.

I am not writing my eulogium for the Academy; I will admit it was
unpardonably imbecile, but I told it her. If you had been there—and seen
her, ravishingly pretty and little, a baby in years and mind—and heard her
talking like a book, with so much of schoolroom propriety in her manner,
with such an innocent despair in the matter—you would probably have told
her yours. She repeated it after me.

“I shall pray for you all my life,” she said. “Every night, when I retire to
rest, the last thing I shall do is to remember you by name.”

Presently I succeeded in winning from her her tale, which was much
what I had anticipated: a tale of a schoolhouse, a walled garden, a fruit-tree
that concealed a bench, an impudent raff posturing in church, an exchange
of flowers and vows over the garden wall, a silly schoolmate for a

confidante, a chaise and four, and the most immediate and perfect
disenchantment on the part of the little lady. “And there is nothing to be
done!” she wailed in conclusion. “My error is irretrievable, I am quite
forced to that conclusion. O, Monsieur de Saint-Yves! who would have
thought that I could have been such a blind, wicked donkey!”

I should have said before—only that I really do not know when it came
in—that we had been overtaken by the two post-boys, Rowley and Mr.
Bellamy, which was the hawbuck’s name, bestriding the four post-horses;
and that these seemed a sort of cavalry escort, riding now before, now
behind the chaise, and Bellamy occasionally posturing at the window and
obliging us with some of his conversation. He was so ill-received that I
declare I was tempted to pity him, remembering from what a height he had
fallen, and how few hours ago it was since the lady had herself fled to his
arms, all blushes and ardour. Well, these great strokes of fortune usually
befall the unworthy, and Bellamy was now the legitimate object of my
commiseration and the ridicule of his own post-boys!

“Miss Dorothy,” said I, “you wish to be delivered from this man?”

“O, if it were possible!” she cried. “But not by violence.”

“Not in the least, ma’am,” I replied. “The simplest thing in life. We are in
a civilised country; the man’s a malefactor——”

“O, never!” she cried. “Do not even dream it! With all his faults, I know
he is not that.”

“Anyway, he’s in the wrong in this affair—on the wrong side of the law,
call it what you please,” said I; and with that, our four horsemen having for
the moment headed us by a considerable interval, I hailed my post-boy and
inquired who was the nearest magistrate and where he lived. Archdeacon
Clitheroe, he told me, a prodigious dignitary, and one who lived but a lane

or two back, and at the distance of only a mile or two out of the direct road.
I showed him the king’s medallion.

“Take the lady there, and at full gallop,” I cried.

“Right, sir! Mind yourself,” says the postillion.

And before I could have thought it possible, he had turned the carriage to
the rightabout and we were galloping south.

Our outriders were quick to remark and imitate the manœuvre, and came
flying after us with a vast deal of indiscriminate shouting; so that the fine,
sober picture of a carriage and escort, that we had presented but a moment
back, was transformed, in the twinkling of an eye into the image of a noisy
fox-chase. The two postillions and my own saucy rogue were, of course,
disinterested actors in the comedy; they rode for the mere sport, keeping in
a body, their mouths full of laughter, waving their hats as they came on, and
crying (as the fancy struck them) “Tally-ho!” “Stop, thief!” “A
highwayman! A highwayman!” It was other guesswork with Bellamy. That
gentleman no sooner observed our change of direction than he turned his
horse with so much violence that the poor animal was almost cast upon its
side, and launched her in immediate and desperate pursuit. As he
approached I saw that his face was deadly white and that he carried a drawn
pistol in his hand. I turned at once to the poor little bride that was to have
been, and now was not to be; she, upon her side, deserting the other
window, turned as if to meet me.

“O, O, don’t let him kill me!” she screamed.

“Never fear,” I replied.

Her face was distorted with terror. Her hands took hold upon me with the
instinctive clutch of an infant. The chaise gave a flying lurch, which took
the feet from under me and tumbled us anyhow upon the seat. And almost

in the same moment the head of Bellamy appeared in the window which
Missy had left free for him.

Conceive the situation! The little lady and I were falling—or had just
fallen—backward on the seat, and offered to the eye a somewhat ambiguous
picture. The chaise was speeding at a furious pace, and with the most
violent leaps and lurches, along the highway. Into this bounding receptacle
Bellamy interjected his head, his pistol arm, and his pistol; and since his
own horse was travelling still faster than the chaise, he must withdraw all of
them again in the inside of a fraction of a minute. He did so, but he left the
charge of the pistol behind him—whether by design or accident I shall
never know, and I dare say he has forgotten! Probably he had only meant to
threaten, in hopes of causing us to arrest our flight. In the same moment
came the explosion and a pitiful cry from Missy; and my gentleman,
making certain he had struck her, went down the road pursued by the furies,
turned at the first corner, took a flying leap over the thorn hedge, and
disappeared across country in the least possible time.

Rowley was ready and eager to pursue; but I withheld him, thinking we
were excellently quit of Mr. Bellamy, at no more cost than a scratch on the
forearm and a bullet-hole in the left-hand claret-coloured panel. And
accordingly, but now at a more decent pace, we proceeded on our way to
Archdeacon Clitheroe’s. Missy’s gratitude and admiration were aroused to a
high pitch by this dramatic scene, and what she was pleased to call my
wound. She must dress it for me with her handkerchief, a service which she
rendered me even with tears. I could well have spared them, not loving on
the whole to be made ridiculous, and the injury being in the nature of a cat’s
scratch. Indeed, I would have suggested for her kind care rather the cure of
my coat-sleeve, which had suffered worse in the encounter; but I was too
wise to risk the anti-climax. That she had been rescued by a hero, that the
hero should have been wounded in the affray, and his wound bandaged with

her handkerchief (which it could not even bloody), ministered incredibly to
the recovery of her self-respect; and I could hear her relate the incident to
“the young ladies, my school-companions,” in the most approved manner of
Mrs. Radcliffe! To have insisted on the torn coat-sleeve would have been
unmannerly, if not inhuman.

Presently the residence of the Archdeacon began to heave in sight. A
chaise and four smoking horses stood by the steps, and made way for us on
our approach; and even as we alighted there appeared from the interior of
the house a tall ecclesiastic, and beside him a little, headstrong, ruddy man,
in a towering passion, and brandishing over his head a roll of paper. At sight
of him Miss Dorothy flung herself on her knees with the most moving
adjurations, calling him father, assuring him she was wholly cured and
entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating forgiveness; and I
soon saw that she need fear no great severity from Mr. Greensleeves, who
showed himself extraordinarily fond, loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal
of tears.

To give myself a countenance, as well as to have all ready for the road
when I should find occasion, I turned to quit scores with Bellamy’s two
postillions. They had not the least claim on me, but one of which they were
quite ignorant—that I was a fugitive. It is the worst feature of that false
position that every gratuity becomes a case of conscience. You must not
leave behind you any one discontented nor any one grateful. But the whole
business had been such a “hurrah-boys” from the beginning, and had gone
off in the fifth act so like a melodrama, in explosions, reconciliations, and
the rape of a post-horse, that it was plainly impossible to keep it covered. It
was plain it would have to be talked over in all the inn-kitchens for thirty
miles about, and likely for six months to come. It only remained for me,
therefore, to settle on that gratuity which should be least conspicuous—so
large that nobody could grumble, so small that nobody would be tempted to

boast. My decision was hastily and not wisely taken. The one fellow spat on
his tip (so he called it) for luck; the other, developing a sudden streak of
piety, prayed God bless me with fervour. It seemed a demonstration was
brewing, and I determined to be off at once. Bidding my own post-boy and
Rowley be in readiness for an immediate start, I reascended the terrace and
presented myself, hat in hand, before Mr. Greensleeves and the Archdeacon.

“You will excuse me, I trust,” said I. “I think shame to interrupt this
agreeable scene of family effusion, which I have been privileged in some
small degree to bring about.”

And at these words the storm broke.

“Small degree! small degree, sir!” cries the father; “that shall not pass,
Mr. St. Eaves! If I’ve got my darling back, and none the worse for that
vagabone rascal, I know whom I have to thank. Shake hands with me—up
to the elbows, sir! A Frenchman you may be, but you’re one of the right
breed, by God! And, by God, sir, you may have anything you care to ask of
me, down to Dolly’s hand, by God!”

All this he roared out in a voice surprisingly powerful from so small a
person. Every word was thus audible to the servants, who had followed
them out of the house and now congregated about us on the terrace, as well
as to Rowley and the five postillions on the gravel sweep below. The
sentiments expressed were popular; some ass, whom the devil moved to be
my enemy, proposed three cheers, and they were given with a will. To hear
my own name resounding amid acclamations in the hills of Westmorland
was flattering, perhaps; but it was inconvenient at a moment when (as I was
morally persuaded) police handbills were already speeding after me at the
rate of a hundred miles a day.

Nor was that the end of it. The Archdeacon must present his
compliments, and pressed upon me some of his West India sherry, and I was

carried into a vastly fine library, where I was presented to his lady wife.
While we were at sherry in the library, ale was handed round upon the
terrace. Speeches were made, hands were shaken, Missy (at her father’s
request) kissed me farewell, and the whole party reaccompanied me to the
terrace, where they stood waving hats and handkerchiefs, and crying
farewells to all the echoes of the mountains until the chaise had
disappeared.

The echoes of the mountains were engaged in saying to me privately:
“You fool, you have done it now!”

“They do seem to have got ’old of your name, Mr. Anne,” said Rowley.
“It weren’t my fault this time.”

“It was one of those accidents that can never be foreseen,” said I,
affecting a dignity that I was far from feeling. “Some one recognised me.”

“Which on ’em, Mr. Anne?” said the rascal.

“That is a senseless question; it can make no difference who it was,” I
returned.

“No, nor that it can’t!” cried Rowley. “I say, Mr. Anne, sir, it’s what you
would call a jolly mess, ain’t it? looks like ‘clean bowled-out in the middle
stump,’ don’t it?”

“I fail to understand you, Rowley.”

“Well, what I mean is, what are we to do about this one?” pointing to the
postillion in front of us, as he alternately hid and revealed his patched
breeches to the trot of his horse. “He see you get in this morning under Mr.
Ramornie—I was very piticular to Mr. Ramornie you, if you remember, sir
—and he see you get in again under Mr. St. Eaves, and whatever’s he going

to see you get out under? that’s what worries me, sir. It don’t seem to me
like as if the position was what you call stratetegic!”

“Parrrbleu! will you let me be?” I cried. “I have to think; you cannot
imagine how your constant idiotic prattle annoys me.”

“Beg pardon, Mr. Anne,” said he; and the next moment, “You wouldn’t
like for us to do our French now, would you, Mr. Anne?”

“Certainly not,” said I. “Play upon your flageolet.”

The which he did with what seemed to me to be irony.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all! I was so downcast by my pitiful
mismanagement of the morning’s business that I shrank from the eye of my
own hired infant, and read offensive meanings into his idle tootling.

I took off my coat, and set to mending it, soldier-fashion, with a needle
and thread. There is nothing more conducive to thought, above all in
arduous circumstances; and as I sewed, I gradually gained a clearness upon
my affairs. I must be done with the claret-coloured chaise at once. It should
be sold at the next stage for what it would bring. Rowley and I must take
back to the road on our four feet, and after a decent interval of trudging, get
places on some coach for Edinburgh again under new names! So much
trouble and toil, so much extra risk and expense and loss of time, and all for
a slip of the tongue to a little lady in blue!

CHAPTER XXIV

THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE

I had hitherto conceived and partly carried out an ideal that was dear to my
heart. Rowley and I descended from our claret-coloured chaise, a couple of
correctly-dressed, brisk, bright-eyed young fellows, like a pair of
aristocratic mice; attending singly to our own affairs, communicating solely
with each other, and that with the niceties and civilities of drill. We would
pass through the little crowd before the door with high-bred preoccupation,
inoffensively haughty, after the best English pattern; and disappear within,
followed by the envy and admiration of the bystanders, a model master and
servant, point-device in every part. It was a heavy thought to me, as we
drew up before the inn at Kirkby-Lonsdale, that this scene was now to be
enacted for the last time. Alas! and had I known it, it was to go off with so
inferior a grace!

I had been injudiciously liberal to the post-boys of the chaise and four.
My own post-boy, he of the patched breeches, now stood before me, his
eyes glittering with greed, his hand advanced. It was plain he anticipated
something extraordinary by way of a pourboire; and considering the
marches and counter-marches by which I had extended the stage, the
military character of our affairs with Mr. Bellamy, and the bad example I
had set before him at the Archdeacon’s, something exceptional was
certainly to be done. But these are always nice questions, to a foreigner
above all: a shade too little will suggest niggardliness, a shilling too much
smells of hush-money. Fresh from the scene at the Archdeacon’s, and
flushed by the idea that I was now nearly done with the responsibilities of
the claret-coloured chaise, I put into his hands five guineas; and the amount
served only to waken his cupidity.

“O, come, sir, you ain’t going to fob me off with this? Why, I seen fire at
your side!” he cried.