There was a mail coach that went north weekly. It took a considerable deal of money and a fortnight of time to make the journey between the two capitals, but MacKellar, free-handed to the last, lent me the money (which I sent him six months later to Holland), and I set out one Saturday from the “Bull and Whistle” in a genteel two-end spring machine that made a brisk passage—the weather considered—as far as York on our way into Scotland.
I left on a night of jubilation for the close of the war and the overthrow of Conflans. Bonfires blazed on the river-side and the eminences round the city; candles were in every window, the people were huzzaing in the streets where I left behind me only the one kent face—that of MacKellar of Kilbride who came to the coach to see the last of me. And everywhere was the snow—deep, silent, apparently enduring.
CHAPTER XLII
I DEPART IN THE MIDST OF ILLUMINATION AND COME TO A JAIL, BAD NEWS, AND AN OLD ENEMY
We carried this elation all through England with us. Whatever town we stopped at flags were flying, and the oldest resident must be tipsy on the green for the glory of the British Isles. The seven passengers who occupied the coach with me found in these rejoicings, and in the great event which gave rise to them, subjects of unending discourse as we dragged through the country in the wake of steaming horses. There was with us a maker of perukes that had found trade dull in Town (as they call it), and planned to start business in York; a widow woman who had buried her second husband and was returning to her parents in Northumberland with a sprightliness that told she was ready to try a third if he offered; and a squire (as they call a laird) of Morpeth.
But for the common interest in the rejoicings it might have been a week before the company thawed to each other enough to start a conversation. The first mile of the journey, however, found us in the briskest clebate on Hawke and his doings. I say us, but in truth my own share in the conversation was very small as I had more serious reflections.
The perruquier, as was natural to his trade, knew everything and itched to prove it.
“I have it on the very best authority,” he would say, “indeed”—with a whisper for all the passengers as if he feared the toiling horses outside might hear him—“indeed between ourselves I do not mind telling that it was from Sir Patrick Dall's man—that the French would have been on top of us had not one of themselves sold the plot for a hatful of guineas.”