“Ye know—” began Mr. Meredith.
“And what is more,” went on the suitor, “though ’t is not for me to make boast, I can assure ye that Lord Clowes is no bad match. In the last two years I’ve salted down nigh sixty thousand pounds in the funds and bank stock.”
“Adzooks!” aspirated the squire. “How did ye that?”
“Hah, hah!” laughed the commissary, triumphantly. “That is what it is to play the cards aright. ’T was all from being carried on that cursed silly voyage to the Madeiras which at that moment I deemed the work of the Evil One himself. I could get but a passage to Halifax, and by luck I arrived there just as Sir William put in with the fleet from Boston. We had done a stroke or two of business in former times, and so I was able to gain his ear, and unfold a big scheme to him.”
“And what was that?”
“Hah! a great scheme,” reiterated Clowes, smacking his lips, after a long swallow of spirits. “Says I, make me commissary-general, and I’ll make our fortunes. We’ll impress food and forage, and the government shall pay us for every pound of—”
“’T was madness,” broke in Mr. Meredith. “Dost not know that nothing has so stirred the people as the taking their crops without payment?”
“Like as not,” assented the commissary; “but ’t is also the way to subdue them. They began a war, and they must pay the usual penalty until they are sickened of it. And since the seizures were to be made, ’t was too good a chance not to turn an honest penny. Pray Heaven they don’t lay down their arms too soon, for I ambition to be wealthier still. Canst hope better for your daughter than that she be made Lady Clowes, and rich to boot?”
“She’s promised—” began the squire, but once again the suitor cut him off.
“She herself told me she is pledged to no one but me.”