“I heard it from the lips of Thurot himself.”
“Thurot! impossible!” he murmured.
“Of Thurot himself, sir.”
“You must be much in that pirate's confidence,” said Mr. Pitt, for the first time with suspicion.
“Not to that extent that he would tell me of his plans for invading my country,” I answered, “and I learned these things by the merest accident. I overheard him speak last Sunday in Dunkerque with the Young Pretender—”
“The Pretender!” cried the Minister, shrugging his shoulders, and looking at me with more suspicion than ever. “You apparently move in the most select and interesting society, Mr. Greig?”
“In this case, sir, it was none of my choosing,” I replied, and went on briefly to explain how I had got into Thurot's chamber unknown to him, and unwittingly overhead the Prince and him discuss the plan.
“Very good, very good, and still—you will pardon me—I cannot see how so devout a patriot as Mr. Greig should be in the intimacy of men like Thurot?”
“A most natural remark under the circumstances,” I replied. “Thurot saved my life from a sinking British vessel, and it is no more than his due to say he proved a very good friend to me many a time since. But I was to know nothing of his plans of invasion, for he knew very well I had no sympathy with them nor with Charles Edward, and, as I have told you, he made me his prisoner on his ship so that I might not betray what I had overheard.”
The Minister made hurried notes of what I had told him, and concluded the interview by asking where I could be communicated with during the next few days.