'But yes,' said Wogan, seating himself on the grass beside Kelly. 'If I am taken, why, it's just Nick Wogan that's taken, and no one but Nick Wogan is a penny the worse. But if you go and are taken--well, there's the Doctor's daughter.'

Kelly would not listen to reason. It was not, he said, a mere matter of slipping into the house and burning the cyphers. But a man must pay for his own shortcomings, and the whole aspect of affairs had changed. And then he fell to thanking Wogan, which thanks Wogan cut short; and so they sat in the moonlight like a couple of owls, only they did not talk.

'You are very thoughtful,' said Kelly, with a tired sort of laugh, 'and you have thought most of your ten minutes away.'

'I was thinking,' said Wogan, 'of a word you used to say about a little parsonage in Ireland and your Latin books, and an acre or two of land, and how, like a fool, I laughed at you for speaking so.'

Kelly rose very quickly to his feet.

'Come, Nick,' said he almost sharply. 'My ten minutes are almost up. I cannot watch Scrope after that, and you may just as well save your life as lose it.'

'I mean to take him with me,' said Wogan. 'Come out, my friend. I'll give him the slip, never fear, when I want to.'

'And then you will start for France?'

Mr. Wogan did not mention a couple of obstacles which would at all events delay his departure. In the first place he had a little matter of business with Lord Sidney Beauclerk, and in the second it would be no more than politeness to inquire after Kelly's health before he went abroad. He kept silent upon this subject, and again summoned Scrope, who waded with his teeth chattering from the water. He drove Scrope before him along a bypath, leaving the Parson standing alone in the moonlight. Mr. Wogan had no expectation that he would ever see his friend's face again, and therefore he swore most heartily at Scrope.

'Come, my man,' said he, 'I am to see that you do not catch cold,' and he marched Scrope at a round pace eastwards as far as Temple Bar, and thence northwards to Soho, and from Soho westwards.