Presently the landlord opened his eyes and looked about him. The reaction brought with it a full measure of consciousness, and with it a command of his faculties. He could think; and, now it was too late, the power of speech was again vouchsafed to him.
“The King went out at that door!” he cried. “The King is escaped! That was the King you conducted to the door.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the astonished Sergeant. “Speak, clown and fool that you are! I tell you the King is upstairs.”
The landlord had now the power to unbosom his soul; and there was such a singular fervour of conviction in his words, that the soldier, vividly impressed by them, and bewildered by them too, made all haste up the stairs to Captain Culpeper, who, as he supposed, was still attending on the King.
The thoroughly alarmed and uneasy Sergeant came to him at the side of the bed, and recited the landlord’s story.
“What is this you say, Sergeant Williams?” said the Captain.
His heart sank with an overmastering foreboding that the landlord had spoken the truth. He had not known the King when he entered the chamber, never having set eyes upon his Majesty before; and none of his men knew him either—they had only hearsay to guide them. Could it be that he was the victim of a trick. He turned furiously upon the man in the bed and the woman beside him.
“My God!” he said, “you have duped me; you have deceived me. The King’s servitor was the King. You have been playing a part.”
The man and the woman looked at him defiantly. Every instant they could maintain their rôles was of the utmost advantage to the fugitive; and in any case their own lives were forfeit.
“What do you mean?” said young Lord Farnham, striving to enact the comedy to the bitter end.