"D'ye know where y're going?" he ended, leering wickedly.
"No," said I.
"Blast ye! I wish ye did!" He gurgled this almost jocosely, as if it were a pet bit of humour.
"Do you know where you are going?" I asked solemnly.
"To hell," he cried, and, after a spout of blood that spattered me as I leaned over him, went.
The carriage stopped and, before I could rise to see why, the door was opened and some one without said politely, "This is indeed a pleasure, Master Wheatman!"
It was my lord Brocton.
It would be foolish to pretend that I was not bitten to the bone, and I can only hope that I did not give outward expression to a tithe of the chagrin and dismay that possessed me. Being commanded to do so, I got out of the coach without a word and looked around.
The rough road along which we had been travelling ran on through a slit in the hills. Where we stood a bridle-path parted from it at a sharp angle and made its way over the lower skirts of the hill country. It was a desolate, dreary spot where, as I suspected, the king's writ ran not and where, therefore, a man might be done to death with all conveniency. Master Freake would be useless to me now, and my chiefest enemy had me at his will.