"If only I knew which way the day would turn!" he said, pacing restlessly up and down. "I tell thee, boy, I would serve the Duke, and be glad to do so; but I am not ready to be ruined for such as he. My business and my goods are more to me than all these questions of kingship and policy. I love not black King James, and I know we may suffer under his sway; but how do we know that we should do better under another? And civil war is a more terrible ill and calamity than a little tyranny and a few unjust imposts. Let well alone, say I; and nothing very bad has followed King James's accession. I like not the thought of stirring up strife. Yet if strife must come, I would fain be found on the right side—if I could but know which that was!"
And by the right side my uncle meant the victorious one, as I very well knew.
Well, it is not of such stuff that heroes and patriots are made. But then my worthy uncle never professed to be either; and a man who has toiled and laboured to get a good business together, and to stand well with those around him, has many excuses for feeling loath to see all swept away for what may seem to him a fantasy or a dream. I could scarce wonder at his words, though I was all for fighting and dying in a noble cause, and was glad that Heaven had not made of me a man of substance, who feared the loss of goods more than the grinding heel of a tyrant usurper. I could afford to feel pity for my uncle's perplexities. I was sorry for him, and longed to be able to relieve him.
"If I did but know more of the feeling of the country!" he said. "I hear such contrary reports. Our Mayor tells me that it is but just in a few places here and there in the land that men are for the Duke, and that the nation at large will have none of him; whilst others say they have full information that the widespread discontent is ready everywhere to burst into a flame, and if the Duke do but land he may march straight to Whitehall if he will, and by the time he reaches it, will have all the nation and all London at his back. If that indeed were so—"
"Uncle!" I cried, struck by a sudden inspiration, "let me fare forth on Blackbird, and reap what news I can as I go, and bring thee word again. Let me to the coast, where the Duke, they say, will shortly land, if he be not landed already; and as I go let me ask news of all men—how things are going all over the country, and what men are saying, and what is doing. I am but a lad. I shall not rouse suspicion, and Blackbird knows not how to tire. Let me go, and I will bring thee word again, or ever the Duke appear, how the chances of the day seem like to go. I will talk with men of every degree. Sure I shall gain information worth the having!"
Now this plan, so congenial to my restlessness and excitement, took the fancy of my uncle; and he forthwith slapped me on the shoulder, and said I was a smart lad and a credit to the family, hunchback or no hunchback. And then he took money from his purse and gave it me, and bid me see well to Blackbird, and make a start upon the following morning, the day being now drawing to its close. He was pleased to think of any plan that might relieve him in some sort of his anxieties. He could remain for some days longer without committing himself to either party, and perchance I might reap information for him which should decide him whether or not openly to embrace the cause of the Duke, towards which his private leanings were.
It was reported that several persons had already left Taunton, and it was shrewdly suspected that they were going forth with the prospect of meeting the Duke. When I went to Master Simpson's shop that evening to tell Will Wiseman of my plan, I heard the Master Hucker had gone, and young Dare, and that he believed his own master would not be long in following.
Will did not know whether any place of landing had been yet settled, but he had heard a whisper of Lyme more than once; and it seemed a likely place, being far smaller and less like to be watched than Weymouth, and much nearer to Taunton, which had the glorious reputation of being the city most in earnest in its loyal attachment to the noble Protestant cause.
Lizzie came and joined us, and said she was certain her father meditated a speedy journey; and hearing that I too was bound for the coast, she became greatly excited, bid me strive to be amongst the first to welcome the gracious and noble Duke, and finally took a ribbon from her neck, and fashioned it into a rosette for my hat. Lizzie and I, I must explain, had for many a day made a pretence of being lovers, and I now felt like a knight going forth on his first feat of arms; so it seemed right and fitting that his lady-love should thus adorn him by her token, as Lizzie had decorated me.
With the first light of the morrow Blackbird and I rode out of Taunton, Will Wiseman trotting beside us for the first mile of our journey, and only wishing that he could be my companion all along.