Читать книгу The Carolinian - His Odyssey - Страница 8

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MR. SELWYN INNES, who was Lord William Campbell's secretary during his lordship's tenure of the office of Governor of the Province of South Carolina, conducted, with a lady in Oxfordshire, a correspondence which on his part was as full and detailed as it was indiscreet. The letters, which have fortunately survived, give so intimate a relation of the day-to-day development of certain transactions under his immediate notice that they would be worthy to rank as mémoires pour servir were it not that history must confine itself more or less to the broad outlines of movements and events, and can be concerned only with the main actors in its human drama.

In one of these garrulous letters there occurs the phrase:

We are sitting on a volcano which at any moment may belch fire and brimstone, and my lord taking no thought for anything but the mode of dressing his hair, the set of his coat, ogling the ladies at the Saint Cecilia concerts, and attending every race-meeting that is held.

From that and abundant other similar indications throughout the secretary's letters, we gather that his opinion of the amiable, rather ingenuous, entirely unfortunate young nobleman whom he had the honour to serve was not very exalted. A secretary, after all, is a sort of valet, an intellectual valet; and to their valets, we know, few men can succeed in being heroes. But with the broader outlook which distance lends us, we now perceive that Mr. Innes did his lordship less than justice. After all, no man may bear a burden beyond his strength, and the burden imposed upon the young colonial Governor in that time of crisis by a headstrong, blundering Government at home was one that he could not even lift. Therefore, like a wise man—in spite of Mr. Innes—he contemplated it with rueful humour, and temporized as best he could, whilst waiting for events that should either lessen that burden or increase his own capacity.

There is also the fact that whilst, like a dutiful servant of the Crown, he was quite ready where possible to afford an obedience that should be unquestioning, it was beyond nature that this obedience should be enthusiastic. He had examined for himself the lamentable question that was agitating the Empire; and the fact that he was married to a colonial lady may have served to counteract the bias of his official position, leading him to adopt in secret the view of the majority—not merely in the colonies, but also at home—that disaster must attend the policy of the Ministry, driven by a wilful, despotic monarch who understood the cultivation of turnips better than the husbandry of an empire. He cannot have avoided the reflection that the Government he served was determined to reap the crop that Grenville had sown with the Stamp Act, determined to pursue the obstinate policy which—the phrase is Pitt's, I think—must trail the ermine of the British King in the blood of British subjects. Lord William perceived—indeed, it required no very acute perception—how oppression was provoking resistance, and how resistance was accepted as provocation for further oppression. Therefore, he remained as far as possible supine, thankful, perhaps, in his secret heart that he was without the means to execute the harsh orders reaching him from home, and obstinately hoping that conciliatory measures might yet be adopted to restore harmony between the parent country and the children overseas whom she had irritated into insubordination. Towards this he may have thought that he could best contribute by bearing himself with careless affability, as an appreciative guest of the colony he was sent to govern. He showed himself freely with his colonial wife at race-meetings, balls, and other diversions, as Mr. Innes records, and he affected an amiable blindness to anything that bore the semblance of sedition.

In the end, as we can trace, Mr. Innes came to perceive something of this, and I suspect that he began to make the discovery on a certain Tuesday morning in June of that fateful year 1775, when Captain Mandeville, his excellency's equerry, waited upon Lord William at the early hour of eight.

Captain Mandeville, who was, himself, lodged in the Governor's residence in Meeting Street, came unannounced into the pleasant, spacious room above-stairs that was Lord William's study. The equerry found his excellency, in a quilted bedgown of mulberry satin, reclining on a long chair, whilst his aproned valet, Dumergue, was performing with comb and tongs and pomade his morning duties upon the luxuriant chestnut hair that adorned the young Governor's handsome head. In mid-apartment, at a writing-table that was a superb specimen of the French art of cabinet-making, with nobly arching legs and choicely carved ormolu encrustations, Mr. Innes was at work.

Lord William looked up languidly to greet his equerry. His lordship had been dancing at his father-in-law's—old Ralph Izard—until a late hour last night, so that the air of fatigue he wore was natural enough.

'Ah, Mandeville! Good-morning. Ye're devilish early astir.'

'Not without occasion.' The Captain's manner was grim, almost curt. It was obviously as an afterthought that he bowed and added, a shade less curtly: 'Good-morning.'

Lord William observed him with quickened interest. He knew no man who commanded himself more completely than Robert Mandeville, who more fully conformed with that first canon of good-breeding which demanded that a gentleman should, at all times, in all places and circumstances, control his person and subdue his feelings. Yet here was Mandeville, this paragon of deportment, not only excited, but actually permitting himself to betray the fact. And it was not only his voice that betrayed it. There was a touch of heightened colour in the Captain's clear-cut, clear-skinned, rather arrogant countenance, whilst in his clubbed blond hair there was more than a vestige of last night's powder to advertise the fact that the Captain, usually so irreproachable in these matters, had made a hurried toilet.

'Why...What is it?' quoth his lordship.

Captain Mandeville looked at Innes, disregarding the secretary's nod of greeting; then at the valet, busy with his lordship's hair.

'It will keep until Dumergue has finished.' His tone was now more normal. He sauntered across to the broad window standing open to a balcony wide and deep and pillared like a loggia. It overlooked the luxuriant garden and the broad creek at the end of it, whose waters sparkling in the morning sunshine showed here and there through the great magnolias that spread a canopy above them.

His lordship's glance followed the officer's tall, graceful figure in its coat of vivid scarlet with golden shoulder-knots and the sword thrust through the pocket, in compliance rather with the latest decree of fashion than with military regulations. His curiosity was aroused, and with it the uneasiness that invariably pervaded him where colonial matters were concerned.

'Innes,' he said, 'let Captain Mandeville read Lord Hillsborough's letter while he waits.' And he added the information that it had just arrived by the war sloop Cherokee and had been brought ashore an hour ago by her captain.

Dumergue interrupted him at that point by thrusting a mirror into his lordship's hand, whilst holding up a second one behind his lordship's head.

'Voyez, milor', he invited. 'Les boucles un peu plus serrés qu'à l'ordinaire...'

He waited, eyebrows raised, head on one side, his glance intensely anxious.

In the hand-glass his lordship calmly surveyed the back of his head, as reflected from the second mirror. He nodded.

'Yes. I like that better. Very good, Dumergue.'

Audibly Dumergue resumed his suspended breathing. He set down his mirror and became busy with a broad ribbon of black silk.

Lord William lowered his own glass to meet the eyes of Captain Mandeville observing him across the document which the equerry had now read.

'Well, Mandeville? What do you think of it?'

'I think it is very opportune.'

'Opportune! Good God, Innes! He thinks it's opportune!'

Mr. Innes, a sleek young gentleman, smiled, and ventured even a slight shrug. 'That was to be looked for in Captain Mandeville.' His voice was gentle, almost timid. 'He is a consistent advocate of...of...strong measures.'

His lordship sniffed.

'Strong measures are for the strong, and to do as Lord Hillsborough commands us...'

He broke off. Captain Mandeville was holding up the hand that held the letter.

'When your excellency's toilet is finished.'

'Oh, very well,' his lordship agreed. 'Make haste, Dumergue.'

Scandalized by the command, Dumergue began a protest.

'Oh, milor'! Une chevelure pareille...une coiffure si belle...'

'Make haste!' His lordship was unusually peremptory.

Dumergue sighed, and cut short his ministrations. With a final touch he perfected the set of the ribbon in which the queue was confined; then he gathered towel, scissors, comb, curling-tongs, and pomade into a capacious basin, made his bow, and retired with wounded dignity.

'Now, Mandeville.'

His lordship sat up, swinging his legs round. They were shapely legs in pearl-grey silk. He considered them complacently. They were among the few things whose contemplation afforded his lordship unalloyed satisfaction.

But Captain Mandeville required his lordship to pay attention to very different matters.

'Lord Hillsborough is quite definite in his instructions.'

'It's so devilish easy for a politician to be definite in London,' grumbled his lordship.

Captain Mandeville paid no heed to the comment. He lowered his eyes to the sheet he held, and read:

The Government is resolved to make an end, a speedy end, of the ungrateful and unfeeling insubordination of the American Colonies, which is occasioning so much pain to His Majesty's Ministers.

'Oh, damn their pain!' said their South Carolina representative.

The equerry read on:

The excessive leniency hitherto observed must now be definitely abandoned, and coercion must at once be employed to subdue these mutinous spirits.

Therefore, I desire your excellency to act without delay, seizing all arms and munitions belonging to the province, raising provincial troops if possible and making ready to receive the British regulars that will be embarked with the least possible delay.

His lordship laughed. 'Not without humour, Mandeville—of the unconscious kind, that so often has a tragic flavour. I am to raise provincial troops. Gadsmylife! As if the provincial troops were not raising themselves, whilst I look on, acquiescing in the damned comedy; pretending not to know the purpose for which they are being raised; regarding them as the ordinary militia which they scarcely trouble to pretend to be. They swarm in the streets until the place looks like a garrison town. They parade and march and drill under my very nose. Indeed, I marvel that I am not asked to sign their officers' commissions. If I were, I suppose I should have to do it. And Lord Hillsborough, snugly at home in England, writes ordering me to raise provincial troops! My God!'

He rose at the end of his bitterly humorous tirade, a tall, handsome, almost boyish figure. 'And you, Mandeville, think this letter opportune!'

'It is opportune with the business that brings me,' said the equerry. 'You are forgetting the back country. Charles Town itself may be a hotbed of rebellion. But up there, beyond the Broad River, they are loyal and tory. And they'll fight.'

'But who wants to fight?' Lord William was almost impatient. 'I am sent out from home with orders to play a conciliatory part—which is the only part I have the means to play, the only part that I believe it is sane to play. Other orders follow. I am to coerce; I am to arm. I am to prepare to receive British troops. The latter I can do. But the rest...'

'That, too, if you have the will,' said Mandeville.

'How can I have the will? Who could have the will whilst there is the faintest chance of conciliation. And why should there not be?'

'Because these people have determined otherwise. Lexington showed us that clearly enough. Up there in Massachusetts...'

'Yes, yes. But this isn't Massachusetts. The enactments which have weighed heavily on the Northern Provinces haven't touched the people in South Carolina.'

'They have touched their sympathies,' Captain Mandeville reminded him. 'And there are enough dangerous spirits here to keep those sympathies at fever-point.'

'And more who are urged by self-interest to remain quiet. It's not for us to stir them up.'

'Yet their Provincial Congress and its very active committees exist, the Society of the Carolinian Sons of Liberty exists. And between them, these illegal bodies rule the province. They rule you.'

'Rule me?' Lord William stiffened. 'I don't recognize their existence,' he declared.

'That is not to abolish them. They exist in spite of you. They come to you with their seditious demands wrapped in constitutional language, and force their measures down your throat, making a mock of your authority.'

'But they are as unwilling to come to blows as I am; and since they have the force, and I have not, it says much for their fundamental loyalty that they are as anxious for conciliation as I am. I believe that in my heart—nay, I know it. Haven't I close relatives among those you would call rebels?'

'What does your lordship call them?'

Lord William looked at him, and flushed. He was annoyed, and yet he curbed the expression of it. He recognized that Mandeville, who had already spent two months in Charles Town, was infinitely better acquainted with Carolinian affairs than himself, who had arrived there only a fortnight ago. And he was completely dependent upon Mandeville in his struggle with the constitutional Commons House of Assembly unconstitutionally transforming itself into a Provincial Congress and operating through equally unlawful subordinate committees. Therefore, he suffered in the equerry certain liberties which in another would never have been tolerated.

'What else, indeed, can you call them?' Mandeville insisted after a moment, on another tone. Then his manner became more brisk. 'But I've something else for your excellency's attention this morning. Cheney is here.'

The Governor looked up in sharp surprise. 'Cheney!'

'He has been set at liberty.'

The young face lighted suddenly. 'There! You see! That's a proof of their disposition.'

'But no explanation is offered of his arrest. Much less regret, as he will tell you if you'll see him.'

'Of course, I'll see him.'

'He has a friend with him, another back-country settler, an intelligent-looking fellow who was sergeant to Kirkland.'

'Bring them in. Both of them.'

Mandeville handed Lord Hillsborough's letter back to Innes, and left the room. The Governor paced across to the window, and stood there looking out, pensive, his chin in his hand.

The news of Cheney's release brought relief to Lord William, who had seen his authority in peril of being openly defied. It was perhaps as a result of this that his reception of the man was more than ordinarily cordial, when presently Captain Mandeville ushered him in, together with his companion, Dick Williams.

'He was sergeant to Kirkland,' Mandeville repeated as he presented the latter.

'And before that?' his lordship inquired, simply out of the interest inspired in him by this young man, so personable and attractive despite his shabbiness.

'A tobacco planter in a small way,' said Williams. 'I have some land, held by the King's bounty, between the Saluda and the Broad. Haven't I, Cheney?'

'Aye. That's a fact,' said Cheney, who wore a hangdog look.

His lordship thought that he understood the fellow's loyalty.

'And therefore you are properly grateful, sir? That is very well. I would all were as dutiful in the back-country settlements. But what of you, Cheney? What grounds did the committee give for your arrest?'

'Just that I came down with Kirkland, as did Dick here. Lucky for him, though, he weren't seen in Kirkland's company.'

'But they couldn't hurt you for being with Kirkland.'

'They might ha' done, if I hadn't denied it. I swore their spy was mistook when he said I came as a life-guard to Kirkland. I said Kirkland and me had met on the Indian trail beyond the town; that we did happen to come in together, but that I knew naught of him being a deserter from the provincial army. I held to that tale, though they tried plaguy hard to shake me out of it. And when they found they couldn't, why, they just let me go. But I ain't safe in Charles Town, my lord.'

'Why not, since they've let you go...?'

'Aye, aye, but they may find out something about me yet, and if they take me up again...' He broke off, distress on his dull face.

'What, then?'

Williams answered for him. 'They may tar-and-feather him,' he said casually.

His lordship made a sharp gesture of abhorrence.

'Why? Because he's a King's man? That's a bugbear. Why don't they tar-and-feather me?'

There was a half-smile on the lean face of the false Dick Williams.

'Your lordship is a great man, protected by your station. We are small fry, whom no one would miss. We play this game with our lives on the board, and if we're put to death'—he shrugged and laughed—'no more notice will be taken of it.'

'Nay, there you are wrong. I should see them punished.'

'That would vindicate your authority, but hardly profit us.'

'They daren't do it. They daren't!' Lord William was emphatic.

'They'll do it to Kirkland, if they get him. And they want him, eh, Cheney?'

'Aye, it's a fact,' said Cheney. 'The committee made no secret of it. They'll put Kirkland to death if they lay hands on him, and any other spy.'

'So they hold that against him, do they—that he's a spy?'

'Aye, and if they'd had grounds enough to hold it against me, I shouldn't be standing here now. If your lordship don't protect me, I'll go in fear of my life.'

Lord William turned to his silent, observant equerry. 'What's to be done, Mandeville?'

'Send them both to join Kirkland,' said Mandeville shortly.

'Aye, aye; but where's Kirkland going?' quoth Williams boldly.

'There's nothing yet decided,' Lord William answered him. 'Meanwhile he's safe aboard the Tamar.'

From Kirkland's pretended sergeant came a frank, pleasant laugh that held a note of recklessness.

'Your lordship may send Cheney there if he's a mind to go. But I don't strike my colours yet. I've come to serve the King, and myself, too, at the same time. There's a fellow named Harry Fitzroy Latimer with whom I've an old account to settle.'

At the mention of that name Captain Mandeville very obviously awoke to keener interest in Dick Williams. His eyes—dark eyes that seemed invested with a singular penetration from being set in so fair a face—levelled a very searching glance upon him.

'Latimer!' he cried sharply, and added after a breathless pause: 'What is there between you and Latimer?'

Williams hesitated, as if the sharp tone had intimidated him. 'Does your honour know him?'

'I asked you a question,' said the Captain stiffly.

Williams smiled, with a touch of deprecation. 'My answer might offend you, Captain. Maybe he's a friend of yours.'

'A friend of mine!' It was the Captain's turn to laugh, and his laugh was not pleasant. 'D'ye think I have friends among the rebels?'

'Oh, but this one.' Williams turned to his lordship. 'Mr. Latimer is one of the richest planters in the Province, in all the thirteen colonies maybe, and he has a mort of friends among the tories. Why, there's Sir Andrew Carey, of Fairgrove Barony, as red-hot a tory as any man in America, and Latimer is to marry his daughter.'

Mandeville looked at him contemptuously. The fellow was not so well-informed after all.

'That may have been the case. It is so no longer. Sir Andrew is my friend, my kinsman; and I have it from himself that this scoundrel Latimer shall never darken his doorway again. I'll add that I do not know him, that I have never seen him, though his deeds are well enough known to me as they are to Lord William.'

'Aye,' grumbled his excellency. 'The fellow's a nasty thorn in our flesh. If the province were rid of him and that firebrand Gadsden, there'd be more hope of a settlement.'

'So speak your mind freely about him,' the equerry invited. 'What is there between you?'

'Just a matter of some fifty acres the grasping scoundrel has filched from my bounty lands, by artful shifting of boundaries.'

Williams's voice quivered with scorn. 'There's a noble gentleman for you. A man as rich as Dives, and not above thieving land from a Lazarus like myself. But that's the spirit of these rebels. They're all alike. Where there's no loyalty to the King, there's no fear of God, nor virtue of any kind.'

'But there's a law to which you can appeal,' Lord William reminded him, shocked by this revelation of turpitude.

'A law!' Dick Williams laughed outright. 'The law's dispensed by such men as Mr. Latimer in South Carolina. The province is ruled by these wealthy planters. And they'll never legislate against one another.'

'We shall alter all that, Williams, when these troubles are settled.'

'That's my hope, my lord. That's my faith.' Enthusiasm kindled in the blue eyes, a flush crept into that lean, pale face. 'And that's why I'm ready to spend my life in the King's service. So that in the end we may have justice of such nabobs as this Mr. Latimer. He keeps the state of a prince out of his plunderings. A kite-hearted scoundrel!'

'You'll have justice, don't doubt it,' said Captain Mandeville slowly. 'The fellow is weaving a rope for his neck. Egad! He's woven it already.'

'Ye don't say, Captain!' Williams was suddenly very eager.

'Oh, but I do,' Mandeville answered him, and snapped his lips together on that subject.

Williams showed a desire to pursue it. At least he hesitated now, twirling his shabby hat in hands that were none too clean. Then Lord William diverted the channel of their talk, or, rather, brought it back from that digression.

'What have you in mind to do, Williams? Where do you propose to go?'

'I? Why back whence I came. Back beyond the Broad. So if your lordship has any messages or letters for Fletchall or the Cunninghams or the Browns, or any other of the loyal folk up yonder, I'm the man to carry them.'

'Letters?' said Lord William, and he smiled. 'Yet if it were known you came with Kirkland...No, no. Besides, I have no letters for them.'

'If you had you'd find me as safe as the others that have carried for your lordship.'

'For me?' His lordship looked surprised. 'Nay, I have sent no letters. Who says I have?'

'It's what I'm supposing, your lordship. For how else should you correspond?'

'Certainly not by letters,' said his lordship, with the air of a man who knows his business.

'By word of mouth, then. There I'm your man. You'll have some message for them?'

'Why, nothing but to bid them keep the men in good order.'

'But you do not yet sanction them to take up arms?'

'Not yet. Not without they have ammunition in plenty, and think they're strong enough.'

The comely young face of Williams lengthened. 'They're not strong enough, nor have they ammunition in plenty. That I know. Besides, Drayton has been up there preaching sedition to them, and that has thinned their ranks.'

'Stale news,' put in Captain Mandeville.

'Aye, I suppose it is,' Williams agreed, and sighed. 'If they could depend upon His Majesty's Government for arms!'

'Bid them be patient,' Lord William answered him, 'and should it become necessary—which God send it may not!—the arms shall presently be forthcoming.'

Again the face lighted eagerly. 'How, your lordship?' he asked breathlessly.

The young Governor sauntered over to the writing-table. 'I could not have told you yesterday. But to-day, I have a letter here from the Secretary of State.' He held it up a moment. And Williams observed that his face was gloomy, his eyes sad. 'His Majesty is resolved to enforce submission from one end of the continent to the other. Tell them that in the back country.'

'It will rejoice their hearts, as it rejoices mine, my lord. Does your lordship mean that soldiers will be sent from England?'

'That is what I mean—here to Charles Town.' There was no exultation in his voice. 'Unless the rebels bend their stubborn necks, this place will shortly be a seat of war.'

'Now that's good hearing, on my life!' The young man glowed with satisfaction, until Captain Mandeville and even the silent secretary Innes smiled to see so much enthusiasm. Lord William alone remained grave.

'There's only one piece of news would gladden me more than that,' Williams added after a moment. 'And that would be really to know, to be sure, that Latimer was as safe to be hanged as your honour seemed to promise. If you've those journeys of his in mind, to Boston and elsewhere, I doubt if there's much in that you can act on. He's not done as much as Drayton's been doing, and others that you know of. And if you can't proceed against those, what can you do against Latimer?'

'We've something more than that against him,' said Lord William.

'If it's anything about which ye're still lacking evidence, it would be a joy for me to get it for your lordship.'

'Nay,' said his lordship affably. 'I think the evidence is complete. Ye're a good fellow, Williams. I'll show you something that'll make you certain of the recovery of your land, with perhaps a few of Mr. Latimer's acres added to them by way of interest: something that'll encourage you to continue to serve your King as stoutly as you have been serving him.' He turned to his secretary. 'Innes, give me that April list.'

Mandeville moved across to his lordship's side. 'Is it... quite prudent?' he asked.

Lord William frowned. It seemed to him that Captain Mandeville was permitting himself a liberty, greater than usual.

'Prudent? And where is the imprudence? What do I betray that may not be published in Charles Town?'

Mandeville pursed his lips. 'Provided that the source of the information is not divulged. That is too precious to be risked in any way.'

'Your talent, Mandeville, is for pointing out the obvious.'

'That is because the obvious sometimes eludes your lordship,' Mandeville answered him with that quiet, smiling insolence that he was rather prone to use.

'Be damned to you for your good opinion of me. Let it quiet your timid heart that the obvious does not escape me now.' He took the document that Innes proffered and unfolded it. He held it out so that Williams could read it. 'What name do you find there at the very top?'

Dick Williams was studying the document as if with effort.

'I...I do not read easily,' he said.

Mandeville's dark eyes flashed upon him with a sudden look of suspicion. 'Yet your speech, sir,' he said, 'is hardly of one who does not read.'

'Oh, I read,' said Williams, no whit perturbed. 'I read printed books. Indeed, I am a great reader of printed books. But I have no great experience of handwriting.' All the while his eyes were on that written sheet. 'And this is a cursedly crabbed hand. Whatever rogue writ that should be sent back to school to learn his pothooks. Ah, I have it, at last! Egad, I should have guessed it. Why, the name is Harry Latimer.'

'Harry Latimer it is,' said his lordship, refolding the document, and restoring it to his secretary. 'It's at the head of the list; and the list is that of the men who were concerned in the raid on the King's armoury here two months ago, in Lieutenant-Governor Bull's time. Latimer was the ringleader. Robbery and high-treason both in one. That will be the indictment he will have to answer one of these fine days.'

Dick Williams was staring at his lordship, a bewildered look in his eyes.

'But I thought he was away in Boston then?'

'So did a good many others. But he wasn't. He was here in Charles Town for three days. And that was one of the things he did.'

Dick Williams looked gravely at his lordship.

'The man who wrote that list will testify, of course?'

'When the time comes.'

'Then why don't you arrest Latimer?'

'Arrest him?'

'He's here in Charles Town,' said Williams, whereupon Captain Mandeville interjected with unusual violence the question:

'How do you know?'

'We saw him this morning in Broad Street as we were on our way here, didn't we, Cheney?'

Cheney woke with a start from the uneasy dejection in which he had been standing.

'It's a fact,' he stolidly attested.

Mandeville mused aloud as it seemed: 'So he's come back, has he?'

'He has. This is your chance, since you can bring forward your witness.'

Lord William laughed, a little bitterly. 'My good fellow, even if the sheriff's officers would execute my warrant, which I doubt, to bring forward my witness is not yet desirable. The matter must wait. But it will lose nothing by waiting. Be sure of that.'

'I see,' said Williams. 'To disclose the witness would be to lose the services of your spy in the enemy's camp. I understand.' He fetched a sigh. 'Ah, well, I'll be patient, my lord, and meanwhile we may pile up the score against our gentleman.' His manner became brisk. 'I'll bear your messages to the back country. I shall be setting out at once. There's nothing to be gained by stopping in Charles Town. If your lordship has any further word...'

'No. I think not. If you'll bear those I have given you, and report to me when you are next here, I shall be obliged. And now there's still to settle about you, Cheney.'

'May it please your lordship,' said Cheney.

But the mercurial Dick Williams settled it for him breezily.

'You come back with me, Cheney. You'll be safe enough beyond the Broad. And it's as easy to get out of Charles Town that way as by way of the wharves. Besides, up there with a musket in your hands you'll be more use to your King than stowed away aboard a man-o'-war.'

'Faith, I don't much care where I goes, so long as I doesn't stay in Charles Town.'

'You ride with me, my lad.'

'Aye, aye! We'd best be going,' said Cheney, who seemed to have no mind of his own.

'Indeed, I think that's best,' agreed his lordship. He turned to his secretary. 'Innes, let them have ten guineas apiece.'

But Williams recoiled. 'My lord!' There was deep injury in his tone.

'Why, what the devil!' His lordship stared at him.

'I'm a spy, my lord. I don't mince words. I'm a spy, and I glory in it. But I don't take money for it. I do it as a duty and for the sake of the entertainment it affords me.'

Looking into those humorous, dare-devil blue eyes of his, Lord William found no difficulty in believing the preposterous statement.

'Egad, Mr. Williams,' said Captain Mandeville, 'ye've an odd sense of humour.'

'I have. Haven't I, Cheney?'

'It's a fact,' said Cheney, who was opening a receptive palm to the gold Mr. Innes poured into it.

Thereupon they took their leave, and Lord William wearily resumed his place on the couch. 'An interesting, attractive fellow that,' he said, feeling for his snuff-box. 'It's the first time I've found it possible to talk to a spy without feeling nauseated. But then he's not really a spy. He had very little to tell us, after all.'

'He was very interesting on the subject of Harry Latimer,' said Mandeville, who was brooding by the window.

'Interesting, perhaps. But hardly useful. If he had been before the committee instead of that oaf Cheney, we might have had something from him.'

'Perhaps you might have had something out of Cheney if you'd questioned him.'

His lordship yawned. 'I forgot,' he said. 'And that fellow Williams talked so much. No matter. What use is information when you can't act upon it? And I thank God I can't. That way lies hope.' He took snuff gloomily.