My lord, I found, had a coach, without arms or insignia, waiting for him at the Great Turnstile in Holborn; where, if persons recognised him as he alighted, he would be taken to have business with the lawyers in Lincoln's Inn, or at my Lord Somers's in the Fields. Following him to the coach on foot, I never saw a man walk in more deep or anxious thought. He took no heed of me, after bidding me by a gesture to attend him; but twice he stood in doubt, and once he made as if he would return whence he had come, and once as if he would cross the Fields-I think to Powis House. In the end he went on, and arriving at the coach, the door of which was opened for him by a footman in a plain livery, he bade me by a sign to follow him into it. This I was not for doing, thinking it too great an honour; but on his crying impatiently, "Man, how do you think I am to talk to you if you ride outside?" I hastened to enter, in equal confusion and humility.

Nevertheless, some time elapsed, and we had travelled the length of Holborn before he spoke. Then rousing himself on a sudden from his preoccupation, he looked at me. "Do you know a man called Barclay?" said he.

"No, your Grace," I answered.

"Sir George Barclay?"

"No, your Grace."

"Or Porter? Or Charnock? Or King?"

"No, your Grace."

"Umph!" said he, seeming to be disappointed; and for a time he looked out of the window. Presently, however, he glanced at me again, and so sharply that I dropped my eyes, out of respect. "I have seen you before," he said, at last.

Surprised beyond measure that he remembered me, so many years having elapsed, I confessed with emotion that he had.

"Where?" he asked plainly. "I see many people. And I have not old Rowley's memory."

I told him. "Your Grace may not remember it," I said, greatly moved, "but many years ago at Abbot's Stanstead, at Sir Baldwin Winston's-"

"What?" he exclaimed, cutting me short, with a flicker of laughter in his grave eyes. And he looked me over. "Did I flesh my maiden justice-sword on you? Were you the lad who ran away?"

"Yes, my lord-the lad whose life you saved," I answered.

"Well, then we are quits," he had the kindness to answer; and asked me how I had lived since those days.

I told him, naming Mr. Timothy Brome, and saying that he would give me a character. The mention of the news-writer, however, had a different effect from that I expected; his Grace conceiving a hasty idea that he also was concerned with Ferguson, and muttering under this impression that if such men were turning, it was vain to fight against the stream. I hastened to disabuse him of the notion by explaining how I came to fall into Ferguson's hands. On which he asked me what I had done for the plotter, and how he had employed me.

"He would send me on errands," I answered, "and to fetch papers from the printers, and to carry his messages."

"To coffee-houses?"

"Often, your Grace."

"Did he ever send you to Covent Garden?" he asked, looking fixedly at me.

"Yes, your Grace, to a gentleman with a white handkerchief hanging from his pocket."

"Ha!" said he; and with an eager light in his face he bade me tell him all I knew of that man. This giving me the cue, I detailed what I had seen and heard at the Seven Stars the previous evening, the toast of the Squeezing of the Rotten Orange, the hints which had escaped the drunken conspirator, not forgetting his references to the Hunting Party, and the date, Saturday or Saturday week. I added also what I had learned from the girl, but mentioned for this no authority. To all my lord listened attentively, nodding from moment to moment, and at last, "Then Porter is not lying this time," he said, drawing a deep breath. "I feared-but here we are. Follow me, my friend, and keep close to me."

Engrossed in my story, and the attention that was due to his rank, I had paid no heed either to the way we had come, or to our gradual passage from the smoke and babble of London to country air and stillness. A vague notion that we were still travelling the Oxford Road was all I retained: and this was rudely shaken when, recalled to the present by his words, I looked out, and discovered that the coach was bowling along an avenue of lofty trees, with park-like pastures stretched on either hand. I had no more than time to note so much and that the horses were slackening their pace, before we rumbled under an archway, and drew up in a spacious courtyard shut in on four sides by warm-looking red-brick buildings, whereof the wing under which we had driven was surmounted by a quaintly-shaded bell-turret.

Ignorant where my lord lived, and little acquainted with the villages which lie around London, I supposed that he had brought me to his house. The sight of a couple of sentries, who walked with arms ported before a wide, low flight of steps leading to the principal door, should have enlightened me; but a flock of pigeons, that, disturbed by our entrance, were now settling down, and beginning to strut the gravel with the most absurd air of possession, caught my attention, and diverted me from this mark of State. Nor did a knot of servants, lounging silently under a portico, or two or three sedans which I espied waiting a little apart, go far to detract from the general air of peace and quietude which prevailed in the place. Other observations I had no time to make; for my lord, mounting the steps, bade me follow him.

I did so, across a spacious hall floored with shining wood laid in strange patterns. Here were three or four servants, who stood at attention, but did not approach; and passing them without notice, we had reached the foot of a wide and handsome staircase before a person dressed plainly in black and carrying a tall slender wand came forward, and with a low bow interposed himself.

"Your Grace's pardon," he said, "the Council has broken up."

"How long?"

"About half an hour."

"Ah! And Lord Somers? Did he go back to town?"

"Yes, your Grace, immediately."

The Duke at that asked a question which I, standing back a little out of respect, and being awed besides by the grandeur of the place and the silence, did not catch. The answer, however, "Only Lord Portland and Mr. Sewell," I heard; and likewise the Duke's rejoinder, "I am going up."

"You will permit me to announce your Grace," the other answered quickly. He seemed to be something between a gentleman and a servant.

"No," my lord said. "I am in haste, and I have that will be my warranty. This person goes with me."

"I hope your Grace-will answer for it then," the man in black replied respectfully, but with a little hesitation in his tone.

"I will answer for it that you are not blamed, Nash," the Duke rejoined, with good nature. "Yes, yes. And now let us up."

On that the man with the wand stood aside-still a little doubtfully I thought-and let us pass: and my patron preceding me, we went up a wide staircase and along a silent corridor, and through one or two swing doors, the Duke seeming to be conversant with the house. It was impossible not to admire the sombre richness of the carved furniture, which stood here and there in the corridor; or the grotesque designs and eastern colouring of the China ware and Mogul idols that peered from the corners, or rose boldly on brackets. Such a mode of furnishing was new to me, but neither its novelty nor the evidences of wealth and taste which abundantly met the eye, impressed me so deeply as the stillness which everywhere prevailed; and which seemed so much a part of the place, that when his Grace opened the second swing door, and the shrill piping voice of a child, crowing and laughing in an ecstasy of infantile pleasure, came forth and met us, I started as if a gun had exploded.

I know now that the sound, by giving my patron assurance that he whom he sought was not there, but in his closet, led to my admission; and that without that assurance my lord would have left me to wait at the door. As it was, he said nothing to me, but went on; and I following him in my innocence through the doorway, came, at the same moment he did, on a scene as rare as it is by me well remembered.

We stood on the threshold of a wide and splendid gallery, set here and there with huge china vases, and hung with pictures; which even then I discerned to be of great beauty, and afterwards learned were of no less value. Letting my eyes travel down this vista, they paused naturally on a spot under one of the windows; where with his back to us and ribbons in his hands, a slight gentleman, who stooped somewhat and was dressed in black, ambled and paced in front of a child of four or five years old. The wintry sunlight which fell in cold bars on the floor, proved his progress to be more showy than real; nevertheless the child shrieked in its joy, and dancing, jerked the ribbons and waved a tiny whip. In answer, the gentleman whose long curled periwig bobbed oddly on his shoulders-he had his back to us-pranced more and more stoutly; though on legs a little thin and bent.

A long moment I stared at this picture, little thinking on what I gazed; nor was it until a gentleman seated at a side table not far from the pair, rose hurriedly from his chair and with a guttural exclamation came towards us, that I remarked this third occupant of the gallery. When I did so, it was to discern that he was angry, and that my lord was taken aback and disturbed. It even seemed to me that my patron made a hasty movement to withdraw. Before he could do so, however, or I who, behind him barred the way, could take the hint, the gentleman in black, warned of our presence by the other's exclamation, turned to us, and still standing and holding the ribbons in his hands looked at us.

He had a long sallow face, which seemed the sallower for the dark heavy wig that fell round it; a large hooked nose and full peevish lips; with eyes both bright and morose. I am told that he seldom smiled, and never laughed, and that while the best tales of King Charles's Court passed round him, he would stand abstracted, or on occasion wither the teller by a silent nod. The Court wits who dubbed my Lord Nottingham, Don Dismallo, could find no worse title for him. Yet that he had a well of humour, deeply hidden and rarely drawn upon, no one could doubt who saw him approach us, a flicker of dry amusement in his eyes giving the lie to his pursed-up lips and the grimness of his visage.

"Your Grace is always welcome," he said, speaking in English a little broken and guttural. "And yet you might have come more à propos, I confess."

"A thousand pardons, sir," my lord answered, bowing until his knee well-nigh touched the ground. "I thought that you were in your closet, sir, or I should have taken your pleasure before I intruded."

"But you have news?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ha! And this person" – he looked fixedly at me-"is concerned."

"Yes, sir."

"Then, my Lord Buck-" and with that he turned and addressed the child who was still tugging at the ribbons, "Il faut partir! Do you hear me, you must go? Go, petit vaurien! I have business."

The child looked at him boldly. "Faut il?" said he.

"Oui! oui! Say merci, and go."

"Merci, Monsieur," the boy answered. And then to us with a solemn nod. "J'ai eu sa Majesté for my chevaux!"

"Cheval! Cheval!" corrected the gentleman in black. "And be off."

CHAPTER XXIV

Apprised by what I heard, not only that I stood in the Gallery of Kensington Court-a mansion which His Majesty had lately bought from Lord Nottingham, and made his favourite residence-but that the gentleman in black whom I had found so simply employed was no other than the King himself, I ask you to imagine with what interest I looked upon him. He whom the old King of France had dubbed in bitter derision, the "Little Squire of – ," and whom two revolutions had successfully created Stadtholder of Holland and Sovereign of these Isles, was at this time forty-six years old, already prematurely bent, and a prey to the asthma which afflicted his later life. Reserved in manner, and sombre, not to say melancholy, in aspect, hiding strong passions behind a pale mask of stoicism as chilling to his friends as it was baffling to his enemies, he was such as a youth spent under the eyes of watchful foes, and a manhood in the prosecution of weighty and secret designs, made him. Descended on the one side from William the Silent, on the other from the great Henry of France, he was thought to exhibit, in more moderate degree, the virtues and failings which marked those famous princes, and to represent, not in blood only, but in his fortunes, the two soldiers of the sixteenth century whose courage in disaster and skill in defeat still passed for a proverb; who, frequently beaten in the field, not seldom garnered the fruits of the campaign, and rose, Antæus-like, the stronger from every fall.

That, in all stations, as a private person, a Stadtholder and a King, his late Majesty remembered the noble sources whence he sprang, was proved, I think, not only by the exactness with which his life was wrought to the pattern of those old mottoes of his house, Sœvus tranquillus in Undis, and Tandem fit Surculus arbor, whereof the former was borne, I have read, by the Taciturn, and the latter by Maurice of Nassau-but of two other particulars of which I beg leave to mention. The first was that more majorum he took naturally and from the first the lead as the champion of the Protestant religion in Europe; the second, that though he had his birth in a republic, and was called to be King by election (so that it was no uncommon thing for some of his subjects to put slights upon him as little more than their equal-ay, and though he had to bear such affronts in silence), he had the true spirit and pride of a King born in the purple, and by right divine. Insomuch that many attributed to this the gloom and reserve of his manners; maintaining that these were assumed less as a shield against the malice of his enemies, than as a cloak to abate the familiarity of his friends.

And certainly some in speaking of him of late years belittle his birth no less than his exploits, when they call him Dutch William, and the like; speaking in terms unworthy of a sovereign, and as if he had drawn his blood from that merchant race, instead of-as the fact was-from the princely houses of Stuart, Bourbon, Nassau, and Medici; and from such ancestors as the noble Coligny and King Charles the Martyr. But of his birth, enough.

For the rest, having a story to tell, and not history to write, I refrain from recalling how great he was as a statesman, how resourceful as a strategist, how indomitable as a commander, how valiant when occasion required in the pitched field. Nor is it necessary, seeing that before the rise of my Lord Marlborough (who still survives, but alas, quantum mutatus ab illo!) he had no rival in any of these capacities, nor in the first will ever be excelled.

Nor, as a fact, looking on him in the flesh as I then did for the first time, can I say that I saw anything to betoken greatness, or the least outside evidence of the fiery spirit that twice in two great wars stayed all the power of Louis and of France; that saved Holland; that united all Europe in three great leagues; finally, that leaping the bounds of the probable, won a kingdom, only to hold it cheap, and a means to farther ends. I say I saw in him not the least trace of this, but only a plain, thin, grave, and rather peevish gentleman, in black and a large wig, who coughed much between his words, spoke with a foreign accent, and often lapsed into French or some strange tongue.

He waited until the door had fallen to behind the child, and the long gallery lay silent, and then bade my lord speak. "I breathe better here," he said. "I hate small rooms. What is the news you have brought?"

"No good news, sir," my patron answered. "And yet I can scarcely call it bad. In the country it will have a good effect."

"Bien! But what is it?"

"I have seen Ferguson, sir."

"Then you have seen a d-d scoundrel!" the King exclaimed, with an energy I had not expected from him; and, indeed, such outbreaks were rare with him. "He is arrested, then?"

"No, sir," the Duke answered. "I trust, however, that he will be before night."

"But if he be free, how came you in his company?" the King asked, somewhat sharply.

My lord hesitated, and seemed for a moment at a loss how to answer. Being behind him, I could not see his face, but I fancied that he grew red, and that the fourth person present, a stout, burly gentleman, marked with the small-pox, who had advanced and now stood near the King, was hard put to it not to smile. At last, "I received a letter, sir," my lord said, speaking stiffly and with constraint, "purporting to come from a third person-"

"Ah!" said the King, drawling the word, and nodding dry comprehension.

"On the faith of which, believing it to be from that other-if you understand, sir-"

"I understand perfectly," said the King, and coughed.

"I was induced," my lord said doggedly, "to give the villain a meeting. And learned, sir, partly from him, and partly from this man here" – this more freely-"enough to corroborate the main particulars of Mr. Prendergast's story."

"Ah?" said the King. "Good. And the particulars?"

"That Sir George Barclay, the person mentioned by Mr. Prendergast, is giving nightly rendezvous in Covent Garden to persons mainly from France, who are being formed by him into a band; the design, as stated by Prendergast, to fall on your Majesty's person in the lane between Fulham Green and the river on your returning from hunting."

"Does he agree as to the names?" the King asked, looking at me.

"He knows no names, sir," the Duke answered, "but he saw a number of the conspirators at the Seven Stars in Covent Garden last night, and heard them speak openly of a hunting party; with other things pointing the same way."

"Was Barclay there?"

"He can speak to a person who I think can be identified as Barclay," my lord answered. "He cannot speak to Charnock-"

"That is the Oxford man?"

"Yes, sir-or Porter, or King; or the others by those names. But he can speak to two of them under the names by which Prendergast said that they were passing."

"C'est tout! Well, it does not seem to me to be so simple!" the King said with a touch of impatience. "What is this person's name, and who is he?"

The Duke told him that I had been Ferguson's tool.

"That rogue is in it then?"

"He is privy to it," the Duke answered.

His Majesty shrugged his shoulders, as if the answer annoyed him. "You English draw fine distinctions," he said. "Whatever you do, however, let us have no repetition of the Lancashire fiasco. You will bear that in mind, my lord, if you please. Another of Taafe's pseudo plots would do us more harm in the country than the loss of a battle in Flanders. Faugh! we have knaves at home, but you have a breed here-your Oates's and your Taafes and your Fullers-for whom breaking on the wheel is too good!"

"There are rogues, sir, in all countries," my lord answered somewhat tartly. "I do not know that we have a monopoly of them."

"The Duke of Shrewsbury is right there, sir," the gentleman behind the King who had not yet spoken, struck in, in a good-natured tone. "They are things of which there is no scarcity anywhere. I remember-"

"Taisez! Taisez!" cried the King brusquely, cutting short his reminiscences-whereat the gentleman, smiling imperturbably, took snuff. "Tell me this. Is Sir John Fenwick implicated?"

"There may be evidence against him," my lord answered cautiously.

The King sneered openly. "Yes," he said. "I see Porter and Goodman and Charnock are guilty! But when it touches one of yourselves, my lord, then 'There is evidence against him,' or 'It is a case of suspicion,' or-oh, you all hang together!" And pursing up his lips he looked sourly at us. "You all hang together!" he repeated. "I stand to be shot at-c'est dommage. But touch a noble, and Gare la Noblesse!"

"You do us an injustice, sir," my lord cried warmly. "I will answer for it-"

"Oh, I do you an injustice, do I?" the King said, disregarding his last words. "Of course I do! Of course you are all faithful, most faithful. You have all taken the oath. But I tell you, my Lord Shrewsbury, the King to whom you swore allegiance, the King crowned in '89 was not William the Third, but Noblesse the first! La Noblesse! Yes, my lord, you may look at me, and as angrily as you like; but it was so. Par dieu et diable, you tie my hands! You tie my hands, you cling to my sword, you choke my purse! I had as much power in Holland as I have here. And more! And more!"

He would have gone farther, and with the same candour I think; but at that the gentleman who had interrupted him before, struck in again, addressing him rapidly in what I took to be Dutch, and doubtless pointing out the danger of too great openness. At any rate I took that to be the gist of his words, not only from his manner, but from the fact that when he had done-the King looking gloomy and answering nothing-he turned to my lord.

"The King trusts your Grace," he said bluntly. "He has never said as much to an Englishman before. I am sure that the trust is well placed and that his Majesty's feelings will go no farther."

The Duke bowed. "Your Majesty authorises me to take the necessary steps then," he said, speaking somewhat drily, but otherwise ignoring what had passed. "To secure your safety, sir, as well as to arrest the guilty, no time should be lost. Warrants should be issued immediately, and these persons taken up."

"Before Ferguson can warn them," the King said in his ordinary tone. "Yes, see to it, my lord; and let the Council be recalled. The guards, too, should be doubled, and the regiment Prendergast mentioned displaced. Cutts must look to that, and do you, my lord," he continued rapidly, addressing the gentleman beside him, whom I now conjectured to be Lord Portland, "fetch him hither and lose no time. Take one of my coaches. It is a plot, if all be true, should do us good in the country. And that, I think, is your Grace's opinion."

"It should, sir. Doubtless, sir, we English have our faults; but we are not fond of assassins."

"And you are confident that tins is no bubble?" the King said thoughtfully.

"Yes, sir, I am."

By this time Lord Portland had withdrawn through a door at the farther end of the gallery. The King, taking a turn this way and that, with his hands clasped behind him, and his head bent low, so that his great wig almost hid his features, seemed to be lost in thought. After waiting a moment the Duke coughed, and this failing to attract the King's attention, he ventured to address him. "There is another matter I have to mention to you, sir," he said, with a touch of constraint in his tone.

The King paused in his walk, and looked sharply at him. "Ah, of course," he said, nodding. "Did you see Lord Middleton."

The Duke could not hide a start. "Lord Middleton, sir?" he faltered.

The King smiled coldly. "The letter," he said, "was from him, I suppose?"

My lord rallied himself. "No, sir, it was not," he answered, with a flash of spirit. "It purported to be from him."

"Yet you went-wherever you went-thinking to see him?" his Majesty continued, smiling rather disagreeably.

"I did," my lord answered, his tone betraying his agitation. "But to do nothing to the prejudice of your service, sir, and what I could to further your interests-short of giving him up. He is my relative."

The King shrugged his shoulders.

"And for years," my lord cried warmly, "was my intimate friend."

The King shrugged his shoulders again. "We have fought that out before," he said, with a sigh of weariness. "And more than once. For the rest in that connection and whatever others may say, Lord Shrewsbury has no ground to complain of me."

"I have cause, sir, to do far otherwise!" the Duke answered in a tone suddenly changed and so full of emotion that it was not difficult to discern that he had forgotten my presence; which was not wonderful, as I stood behind him in the shadow of the doorway, whither out of modesty I had retreated. "God knows I remember it!" he continued. "Were it not for that, if I were not bound to your Majesty by more than common ties of gratitude, I should not be to-day in a service which-for which I am unfit! The daily duties of which, performed by other men with indifference or appetite, fill me with pity and distaste! the risks attending which-I speak without ceremony, sir-make me play the coward with myself a hundred times a day!"

"Cæsar," the King said quietly, "lets none but Cæsar call him coward."

Kindly as the words were uttered, and in a tone differing much from that which the King had hitherto used, the Duke took no heed of them. "Others wish for my place; God knows I wish they had it!" he cried, his agitation growing rather than decreasing. "Every hour, sir, I pray to be quit of the faction and perjury in which I live! Every hour I loathe more deeply the work I have to do and the people with whom I have to do it. I never go to my office but my gorge rises; nor leave it but I see the end. And yet I must stay in it! I must stay in it! I tell you, sir," he continued impetuously, "on the day that you burned those letters you but freed me from one slavery to fling me into another!"

"Yet an honest one!" said the King in a peculiar tone.

My lord threw up his hands. "You have a right to say that, sir. But if anyone else-or, no I-I forget myself."

"Something has disturbed you," said the King intervening with much kindness. "Take time! And in the meanwhile, listen to me. As to the general distaste you express for my service, I will not, and I do not, do you the injustice to attribute it-whatever you say yourself-to your fears of what may happen in a possible event; I mean, l'ancien régime restitué. If such fears weighed so heavily with you, you would neither have signed the Invitation to me, nor come to me eight years ago. But I take it with perhaps some apprehensions of this kind, you have-and this is the real gist of the matter-a natural distaste for affairs, and a natural proneness to be on good terms with all, rogues as well as good men. It irks you to sign a death-warrant, to send one to Newgate, and another to-bah, I forget the names of your prisons; to know that your friends abroad are not as well placed at St. Germain's as they were at St. James's! You have no care to push an advantage, no anxiety to ruin a rival; you would rather trust a man than bind him. In a word, my lord, you have no taste for public life in dangerous and troubled times such as these; although perforce you have played a high part in it."

"Sir!" the Duke cried, with an anxiety and eagerness that touched me, "you know me better than I know myself. You see my failings, my unfitness; and surely, seeing them so clearly, you will not refuse to-"

"Release you?" the King said smiling. "That does not follow. For consider, my lord, you are not the only one in the world who pursues perforce a path for which he has little taste. To be King of England has a higher sound than to be Stadtholder of Holland. But to be a King and no King; to see your way clearly and be thwarted by those who see no fool of the field; to have France by the throat and be baffled for the lack of ten thousand men or a million guilders; above all, to be served by men who have made use of you-who have one foot on either shore, and having betrayed their old Master to gain their ends, would now betray you to save their necks. This, too, forms no bed of roses! But I lie on it! I lie on it!" he concluded phlegmatically; and as he spoke he took a pinch of snuff. "In fine, my lord," he continued, "to be high, or what the world calls high, is to be unhappy."

The Duke sighed. "You, sir, have those qualities which fit you for your part," he said sadly. "I have not."

"Have I?"

The King said no more, but the gesture with which he held out his hands, as if he bade the other mark his feebleness, his short breath, his hacking cough, his pallor, had more meaning than many words. "No, my lord," he continued after a pause, "I cannot release you. I cannot afford to release you, because I cannot afford to release the one man who does not day by day betray me, and who never has betrayed me!"

"I would to heaven that you could say that!" the Duke cried, much moved.

"I can, my friend," the King answered, with a gesture of kindness. "It was nothing, and it is forgotten. I have long ceased to think of it. But, c'est vrai! I remember when I say I can trust no one else. I do my good Somers an injustice. He is a dry man, however, like myself, and poor company, and does not count for much."

My lord, contending with his feelings, did not answer, and the King who, while speaking, had seated himself in a high-backed chair, in which he looked frailer and more feeble than when on his legs, let a minute elapse before he resumed in a different and brisker tone, "And now tell me what has troubled our good Secretary to-day?"

"The Duke of Berwick, sir, is in London."

To my astonishment, and I have no doubt to the Duke's, the King merely nodded. "Ah!" he said. "Is he in this pretty plot, then?"

"I think not," the Duke answered. "But I should suppose-

"That he is here to take advantage of it," the King said. "Well, he is his uncle's own nephew. I suppose Ferguson sold him-as he has sold every one all his life?"

"Yes, sir. But not, I think, with the intention that I should carry out the bargain."

"Eh?"

"It is a long tale, sir," the Duke said rather wearily. "And having given your Majesty the information-"

"You need not tell the tale? Well, no, for I can guess it!" the King answered. "The old rogue, I suppose, was for ruining you with me if you hid the news; and for damning you with King James if you informed: which latter he did not think likely, but that instead he would have a hold on you."

The Duke in a tone of much surprise acknowledged that he had guessed rightly.

"Well, it was a pretty dilemma," said the King with a sort of gusto. "And where is M. FitzJames in hiding?"