And yet, when taking the air the next morning in company of this very confidant, there, slipped in by the relaxed guard, was the familiar, hated figure, pleading and clamouring.
“Hog! Dolt!” cried the King, maddened beyond all subterfuge, turning on his henchman: “Did I not tell thee to rid me of the prior of St. Come?”
“Highty-tighty, gossip!” answered the Provost—“what’s all this to-do? And have I not?”
“The prior, I say—the prior?”
“Fast in a sack, gossip, and lying these ten hours past at the bottom of the Seine.”
“Fool! But I meant this one!”
“Phew! Why didn’t you say so? The prior, quotha. This is not the prior. But rest easy; the mistake is soon amended.”
“No,” said the King, who after all had a sense of humour; “this is Heaven’s hand, and I but the poor tool in it. The prior claim is his”—and he turned to the suppliant. “Go,” he said, “in peace, old man. Return to thy flock. The seat is once more vacant, and thy petition is granted.”
CAPTAIN MACARTNEY
One dark November afternoon in the year 1712 a horseman, riding westwards from Cobham village, in Surrey, pulled up at the junction of the road with the Kingston and Guildford highway, and dismounted in order that he might read the terms of a proclamation pasted upon the signpost there.