Joseph looked a little bewildered.
“The King!” he said, excitedly.
“Hush, hush, thou fool!” said the nervous Gamaliel. “If we are overheard, we are undone.”
Turning round in his anxiety, he became aware that although Cicely the serving-maid was ostensibly cleaning the warming-pan, she was really listening with all her ears.
“My wench,” said her master, sharply, “do you go into the cellar and broach that small barrel of October. I told ye to do so yesterday.”
When Cicely had disappeared to do his bidding, Gamaliel continued his instructions.
“Now, Joseph,” he said, in the same eager whisper as before, “you understand. You will do all this quickly and secretly, and your father’s fortune is made. But, Joseph, I think instead o’ saying to Captain Culpeper, ‘The King is at the “Sea Rover,”’ you had better say: ‘My father, Master Gamaliel Hooker, hath sent me to tell you that the King is at the “Sea Rover.”’ The Captain must understand that I sent ye, Joseph. But perhaps it would be better that I writ this information down on a piece of paper, and signed my name to it. Nobody can then take the credit of it from me.”
With this cunning end in view, he caused Joseph to procure him the materials for writing. He thereupon committed the message to paper with much anxious care and many laborious twistings of the mouth. At last it was written and sanded, signed and sealed, and delivered into Joseph’s hand. Five minutes afterwards Joseph’s nag stood at the door, and Joseph himself was superintending Cicely whilst she put up for him a hunch of bread and cheese to bear with him for his dinner. Then it was that the landlord suddenly rose from his chair, and began anxiously to hobble about the kitchen. Just as Joseph had put the bread and cheese in his pocket, and was going out of the door, the landlord stayed him.
“Joseph,” he said, hoarsely, “give me back again the paper I have writ, and go and unsaddle the tit. We will let this matter bide a bit; I must think upon it.”
He had his fourth glass of hot rum-and-water to aid him to do so. He meditated upon the grave matter until his head was ready to split. He was taken with a vacillation that he had never experienced before. His natural instincts were all for betraying the King. There lay his pecuniary advantage, and even his personal safety. Should it become known that he had harboured the man, knowing him to be the King, he was as good as dead. A hundred times he arrived at that plain, inevitable conclusion; yet a hundred times, at the very moment he was about to act, his resolution weakened, and then appeared to snap. Some strange tremor would arise in the remotest recesses of his brain.