"You have not lost the tongue of an Englishman, Master Ormerod, and for that let us be thankful. Aye, 'tis a crotchet of mine to drink a posset of ale, fetched from a brewer in Dorset whose ways are known to me, each night before I rest. It settles the digestion—although my friends the savages in North America do protest that naught is necessary upon retiring save a long drink of clear, cold water."
"You have fought hard for the comfort I see around me?" I suggested.
"Aye, but we shall have time anon to speak of that. Do you tell me now of your present plight. Fear not to be frank with me, Master Ormerod. I do not mix in politics. I am none of your red-hot loyalists who would hang a man because he remarks that our worthy King is Hanoverian by birth. But on the other hand I'll have naught to do with these plotters who fume over the exiled Stuarts.
"The Stuarts went, sir, because they over-taxed the forbearance of a long-suffering people. They might have returned ere this, as you know, had they possessed the good sense to appreciate what their whilom people required. But they lacked that good sense, Master Ormerod, and with all deference I say to you they will never return unless they learn that lesson—and abjure Popery—very soon."
I leaned forward in my chair and interrupted him, the words bubbling from my lips.
"I could not have put neater my own feelings, Master Juggins. When I was a lad not yet of age I risked all I had for the Stuart cause. What came of it? A life of exile that might have ruined me, as it has many a better man. My family's estate was sequestrated; my outlawry was proclaimed. I have no place to lay my head, save it be by the bounty of a foreigner.
"Have I secured any moral satisfaction by these sacrifices? At first I thought I had.
"They told me it was all for the Good Cause, the Cause that some day must triumph. The man you call the Pretender—it irks my lips to brand him so, despite how I have suffered in his name—took me by the hand, made me a chamberlain at his trumpery Court. I received a commission to fight under an English prince in foreign wars, mayhap against my own land. 'Tis only accident has averted that so far.
"But when I looked closer I found that I had done nothing for my country. For this prince, whom some men call King and some Pretender, yes. But for my country, nothing."
"This made me think the harder, Master Juggins. At the beginning I had taken zest in the plots and plans which were aimed to bring about his restoration to power.