"I am sorry I have dragged you into this thing. You should have gone after her. You can go even now."
"Impossible, Richard," replied Smeaton, in the same low tone; "but you can, and you must. My station, my age, my name, my family, all forbid me to quit this cause when I have once embarked in it. Such is not the case with you. Emmeline requires protection, assistance, and support. To you I trust her in the fullest and most implicit confidence, and I beseech you to fly to her and to give her that aid which I cannot--I must not--attempt to afford."
"No, no," cried Richard, aloud, with a laugh, "no, no!" And then, suddenly breaking off, he exclaimed: "But you promised to introduce me to a relation, noble Earl. Confer the favour, I beseech you. I am poor in such things. I have but one father and a cousin in my purse; and I am avaricious of more wealth."
Smeaton put away his letters, and introduced his young companion to William Newark, begging Richard to get hold of their Quartermaster and find good quarters for their visitor.
Richard suffered his cousin to shake him by the hand, but eyed him still like a shy fiery horse, glancing askance at the approach of an unskilful rider. The other, however, was all ease and self-possession, rejoiced exceedingly, as he said, to see his young cousin, spoke with expressions of regret of Sir John's confinement in the Tower, and cursed the chance which deprived the cause of so strong an arm and so skilful a head.
He then began to talk of his quarters, and Richard led him away to seek them with an air which he seemed to think very satisfactory, but which Smeaton, who knew the lad better, judged to be anything but an indication of amicable feelings towards his newfound friend. The young nobleman's thoughts, however, were soon engrossed in other matters; for Emmeline's letter reawakened many a pleasant, many a painful train of reflections, and he gave himself up to memories for more than half an hour, before he turned his steps towards the quarters of General Forster.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
It is wonderful how rapidly Somerville, as he called himself, gained to all appearance upon the good opinion of his young cousin. They became quite intimate. Richard found out for him a very comfortable room, sat and talked gaily with him for more than an hour, and then left him with a promise to come and sup with him tête-à-tête that night, that they might talk over matters of family interest.
Quarters had not been procured for William Newark too soon; for hardly an hour had passed ere a troop of some seventy men entered the town, headed by a person named Douglas, whom good old Mr. Robert Patten terms a gentleman, but who, nevertheless, followed the ancient and honourable occupation of horse-stealing upon the border. In the bustle and confusion which attended the congregation of a body of between three and four hundred men, most of them calling themselves gentlemen, in the small town of Rothbury--little farther communication took place between Richard Newark and the Earl of Eskdale. They met once, and Smeaton thought fit to give his young friend a hint in regard to the character of his cousin.
"He was always wild, rash, and intemperate," he said, "yet with a great deal of shrewdness, which deprived him, of one excuse for the commission of follies. He cannot be said to have committed any from mere thoughtlessness, and I do not think that your father feels at all well disposed towards him."