"Of course not," answered Wilton; "but tell me, landlord, had he heard of this unfortunate business of the lady being carried off, before he went?"
"Lord bless you, no, sir," replied the man—"I only heard of it myself an hour ago. But one of our people was talking with a waterman just above there, and he said that there was a covered barge—like a gentleman's barge—came down at a great rate, about six o'clock; and he vowed that he heard somebody moaning and crying in it; but likely that is not true, for he never said a word till after he heard of the Duke's young lady having been whipped up."
Wilton obtained easily the name and address of the waterman, and finding that there was no chance whatever of gaining any further intelligence of Green, or any means of communicating with him at an earlier period than the following night, he took his leave of the good host, and rose to depart. The landlord, however, stopped him for a moment.
"Stay a bit, Master Brown," he said. "You see, I rather think there are one or two gentlemen in the lane waiting just to talk a word with my good Lord Peterborough, who is likely to pass by; and as the Colonel told me that you were not just in that way of business yourself, you had better take the boy with you."
"No, indeed," replied Wilton, somewhat bitterly, "I am not exactly, as you say, in that way of business myself. I am being taught to rob on a larger scale."
"Oh, sir!" exclaimed the landlord, not at all understanding Wilton's allusion to his political pursuits, "all these gentlemen keep the highway a horseback too. This foot-padding is only done just for a bit of amusement, and because the Colonel is out of the way. He would be very angry if he knew it.—But I did not know you were upon the road at all, sir."
"No, no," replied Wilton, smiling, "I was only joking, my good friend. The sort of robbery I meant was aiding kings and ministers to rob and cheat each other."
"Ay, ay, sir!" said the landlord, now entering into his meaning, and taking as a good joke what Wilton had really spoken in sadness—"you should have called it miching, sir—miching on a great scale. Well, that's worse than t'other. Give me the King's Highway, I say! only I'm too fat and pursy now."
This said, he went and called a little boy well trained in bearing foaming pots from place to place, who soon conducted Wilton back in safety to the house of the Duke, and then undertook to send up the waterman with all speed. By this time the Messenger from the Earl of Byerdale had arrived; but although the good gentlemen called Messengers, in those days, exercised many of the functions of a Bow-street officer, and possessed all the keen and cunning sagacity of that two-legged race of ferrets, neither he nor Wilton could elicit any farther information from the waterman than that which had been already obtained.
"I think, sir, I think, your grace," said the Messenger, bowing low to the statesman's secretary, and still lower to the Duke, "I think that we must give the business up for to-night, for we shall make no more of it. To-morrow morning, as early as you please, Mr. Brown, I shall be ready to go down the river with you, and I think we had better have this young man's boat, as he saw the barge which he thinks took the young lady away. Hark ye, my man," he continued, addressing the waterman, "you've seen fifty guineas, haven't you?"