"Archibald!" exclaimed the other with a start. "Archibald! Heavens! we had forgotten!--what have we been thinking of? He may be taken too."
"Taken! Archibald taken! Oh, Bertie, why should that be?"
"Why should it be! Rather ask, why should it not be? Do you think that tiger's whelp who has set the law on us will spare him? No, Simeon Larpent means to make a clean sweep of all at once; his wife's old lover, that lover's friend, and the priest who knows so much of his early life and all his secrets, plots and intrigues against first one and then the other, Jacobite and Hanoverian alike. I tell you, Archibald is in as great a danger as we are!" and he strode on determinately as he spoke.
Their way lay now towards Knightsbridge by a fair, broad road through the fields, and between some isolated houses and villas that were dotted about; and as by this time the moon was well up, everything they passed could be seen distinctly. Of people, they met or passed scarcely any; the road that, an hour or so before, had been covered with revellers of all degrees wending their way back from Ranelagh to the suburbs of Chelsea, Kensington, and Knightsbridge, or to what had, even in those days, been already called "The Great City," was now, with midnight at hand, as deserted as a country lane. Yet one sign they did see of the debaucheries that took place in Ranelagh as well as in the Spring Gardens; a sign of the drunkenness and depravities that prevailed terribly in those days among almost all classes. Lying at the side of the road, where, doubtless, they had fallen together as they reeled away from the night's orgie, they perceived two young men and a young woman--masked, and presenting a weird appearance as they lay on their backs, their flushed faces turned up to the moon, yet with the upper part hidden by the black vizard. It was easy to perceive that all had fallen together and been afterwards unable to rise--as they lay side by side they were still arm in arm, and, doubtless, the first who had fallen had dragged the others after him. The two young men seemed from their apparel to be of a respectable class, perhaps clerks or scriveners, their clothes being of good cloth, though not at all belaced; as for their companion, the bacchante by their sides, she might have been anything from shopgirl or boothdancer down to demirep.
"Now," said Douglas, "here is our chance for disguise. These fellows have good enough coats and hats--see, too, they sport the black cockade. Well, 'twill not hurt them to sell us some apparel." Wherewith he proceeded to lift the nearest sot up and relieve him of his coat, waistcoat, and hat. Apparently the fellow thought he was being put to bed by some one, as he muttered indistinctly, "Hang coat over chair--shan't wear it 'gain till Sunday"--but as Douglas slipped a couple of guineas into his breeches pocket he went to sleep peacefully enough once more. As for the other young man, he never stirred at all while Bertie removed his garments, nor when he put into his pocket a similar sum of two guineas, and also his copper-cased watch, which had slipped from out his fob.
"They are somewhat tight and pinching," remarked Douglas as he and his friend donned their new disguise, "even though we are now as lean as rats after our Scotch campaign."
Yet, tight as their new clothes were, they answered, at least, a good purpose. It would have taken a shrewd eye to recognise in these two respectably clad men--in spite of their coats being somewhat dusty from having lain in the road while on the backs of their late masters, the headsman and the Highlander who, a few hours before, had walked round and round the orchestra pavilion at Vauxhall.
After this they went forward briskly towards Kensington-square, attracting no attention from anyone indeed meeting few people, for at this distance from the heart of the town there was scarcely anyone ever stirring after midnight, and it was somewhat past that time now. As they neared Kensington, it is true, they were passed by a troop of the Queen's Guards (as the 2nd Life Guards were then called) returning, probably, from some duty at St. James's Palace, but otherwise they encountered none whom they need consider hostile to them.
In the square there was, when they reached it at last, no sign of life. The watchman in his box slumbered peacefully, his dog at his feet, and in the windows of the houses scarcely a light was to be seen. Nor was there any appearance of activity in the house belonging to Fordingbridge, though Bertie thought he should have at least seen some light in the room which he knew, from enquiry of Sholto, to be Kate's.
"'Tis strange," he said, "strange. Surely they must have returned from the masquerade by now. After crossing the water a coach would have brought them here in less than an hour. 'Tis passing strange!"