"But you will not go?" she said, turning to me quickly. "Any day the country may rise and every arm will be needed—I mean every young arm."
I shook my head.
"The French King is dying, maybe is dead, and without his help will the country rise? Besides, so long as I stay here, I endanger you."
I spoke reluctantly enough, for though I had no intention whatever to seek a refuge in France, I felt that if once Mr. Curwen definitely promised to send me thither, I could not remain at Applegarth at however small a risk to him and his. I must needs accept the offer and—betake me again to the hillside, in which case there was little probability that I should be able to effect anything towards Anthony Herbert's enlargement before I was captured myself.
"There is no danger to us," she said. "For, some while since, we persuaded my father to take no active share in the plans. There will be no danger," and she stopped for a second, "if you will put out your candle when next you leave it in the stables."
"My candle?" I stammered, taken aback by her words. "I left it burning?"
"Last night," said she.
"I beg your pardon."
"There is very great reason that you should," she said with a laugh. "For I must needs hurry on my clothes and put it out. As I said, you are very imprudent, Mr. Clavering;" and with that she tripped down to the house, leaving me not so much concerned with what she had hinted about her father, as with my own immediate need to secure the knowledge I was after quickly, and avert by my departure the smallest risk from Applegarth.
I was on that account the more relieved when, late upon the third night afterwards, Tash knocked at the door, and brought me a letter from Lord Derwentwater. I opened it eagerly, and read it through. It told me much which is common knowledge now, as that the Earl of Mar had summoned his friends in Scotland to meet him at Aboyne on the 27th, upon the pretext of a great hunting-party; that the mug-house riots in London were daily increasing in number and violence; but that with the French King, so near to his dissolution, and the precautions of the English Government in bringing over Dutch troops, and thronging the Channel with its ships, Lord Bolingbroke was all for delay. "But God knows," he added, "whether delay is any possible, and I fear for the event. We have many of the nobles on our side—but the body of our countrymen? It will be like a game of chess in which one side plays without pawns. We have Bishops and Knights and Castles, but no pawns."