‘As myself.’
‘How very charming!’ said he, with something between a smile and a sneer. ‘David and Jonathan—or, to be more classical and less scriptural, Damon and Pythias—eh?’ These papers, then, are from the faithful abroad, the exiles in Holland, ye understand, who are thinking of making a move and of coming over to see King James in his own country with their swords strapped on their thighs. The letters are to those from whom they expect sympathy, and notify when and where they will make a landing. Now, my dear lad, you will perceive that instead of my being in your power, you are so completely in mine that it needs but a word from me to destroy your whole family. Decimus Saxon is staunch, though, and that word shall never be spoken.’
‘If all this be true,’ said I, ‘and if your mission is indeed as you have said, why did you even now propose to make for France?’
‘Aptly asked, and yet the answer is clear enough,’ he replied; ‘sweet and ingenuous as are your faces, I could not read upon them that ye would prove to be Whigs and friends of the good old cause. Ye might have taken me to where excisemen or others would have wanted to pry and peep, and so endangered my commission. Better a voyage to France in an open boat than that.’
‘I will take you to my father,’ said I, after a few moments’ thought. ‘You can deliver your letter and make good your story to him. If you are indeed a true man, you will meet with a warm welcome; but should you prove, as I shrewdly suspect, to be a rogue, you need expect no mercy.’
‘Bless the youngster! he speaks like the Lord High Chancellor of England! What is it the old man says?
“He could not ope
His mouth, but out there fell a trope.”
But it should be a threat, which is the ware in which you are fond of dealing.
“He could not let
A minute pass without a threat.”
How’s that, eh? Waller himself could not have capped the couplet neater.’