"Then 'tis lucky that I came provided with a copy." Captain Bright produced a paper from the breast of his tunic.
The Mayor took it with trembling hands. "Why, 'tis a duplicity!" he cried. "A very duplicity! and, what's more, printed in the same language word for word." He caught the mace from the little man in black. "Lead the way, Captain!"
CHAPTER IX.
I ENLIST AN ARMY.
"If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet." Sir John Falstaff.
My father turned to me as they descended the stair. "This is all very well, lad," said he, "but we have yet to find our army. After the murder of Julius Caesar, now—"
"I did enact Julius Caesar once," quoted Mr. Fett, in parenthesis.
"I was killed i' the capitol; Brutus killed me."
My father frowned. "After the murder of Julius Caesar, when the mob for two days had Rome at their mercy, I have read somewhere that two men appeared out of nowhere, and put themselves at the head of the rioters. None knew them; but so boldly they comported themselves, heading the charges, marshalling the ranks, here throwing up barricades, there plucking down doors and gates, breaking open the prisons and setting fire to private houses, that presently the whisper spread they were Castor and Pollux; till, at length, falling into the hands of the aediles, these dioscuri were found to be two poor lunatics escaped from a house of detention. If we could discover another such pair among the mob, now!"
"We are wasting time here for certain," said I. "And where, by the way, is Billy Priske?"
"If you waste your time upstairs here, gentlemen," said Miss Whiteaway, "belike you may do better in the parlour, where I had prepared for some friends of mine with two-three chickens and a ham."