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."
"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.