I drew the miniature from my pocket and recalled the damp, wintry day in Paris I had made up my mind to quit the Jacobite cause and try my fortune at all risks in England; the pang with which I had abandoned the last link remaining with my dead parents; the rough trip in the smuggler's lugger; the wet landing at night on the dreary Channel coast; the fruitless attempts to enlist the aid of former friends; the hue and cry upstart cousins had raised; the flight to London; the——
"Ha, there, Ormerod!"
I looked up to see the burly figure of Governor Burnet rounding the corner. He waved a handful of papers at me.
"The packet hath brought great news!" he cried.
"What is it, your Excellency?"
"The Lords of Trade have seen the light, —— 'em! After we had overridden 'em and pounded sense into their thick heads with mallets, by gad! But they are coming around to our view, and for that a humble provincial governor should be thankful, I daresay. Do but hark to this!"
And, standing with legs spread apart in the middle of the paved sidewalk, he read:
"And seeing that the resentment of the Six Nations is so deeply stirred by reason of the tabling of the law, we are resolved that the provincial Government shall have authority to impose the duties upon trade-goods for Canada as before. And his Excellency the governor shall be required to file a complete report of the situation with such addenda, facts and statistics relative to amounts and totals of trade and fluctuations therein in the recent past as may be helpful to their lordships in reaching a final decision in this matter."
He shook the paper with a quaint mixture of derision and satisfaction.
"A final decision, forsooth! The plain truth, Ormerod, is that the protests of the French Court have aroused our merchants at home to a realization of the dangers they ran, and now that Murray is defeated and broken his friends and fellow-plotters have no reason for pushing their intrigue. 'Tis a commentary, indeed, upon the brains we have at Whitehall. I say naught of the City men, who after all can not be expected to be familiar with politics and the interplay of national ambitions.