“Maybe,” said Nick with a sniff, “you're intending to journey to Tower Hill?”
“In that direction,” answered Mr. Wilding suavely.
“I am for London, Nick. And you shall come with me.”
“God save us! Do you keep a fool's egg under that nest of hair?”
Wilding explained, and by the time Walters returned with the boots Trenchard was walking up and down the room in an odd agitation. “Odds my life, Tony!” he cried at last. “I believe it is the best thing.”
“The only thing, Nick.”
“And since all is lost, why...” Trenchard blew out his cheeks and smacked fist into palm. “I am with you,” said he.
CHAPTER XXIV. JUSTICE
It has fallen to my lot in the course of this veridical chronicle of Mr. Anthony Wilding's connection with the Rebellion in the West, and of his wedding and post-nuptial winning of Ruth Westmacott, to relate certain matters of incident and personality that may be accounted strange. But the strangest yet remains to be related. For in spite of all that had passed between Sir Rowland Blake and the Westmacotts on that memorable night of Sunday to Monday, on which the battle of Sedgemoor was lost and won, towards the end of that same month of July we find him not only back at Lupton House, but once again the avowed suitor of Mr. Wilding's widow. For effrontery this is a matter of which it is to be doubted whether history furnishes a parallel. Indeed, until the circumstances are sifted it seems wild and incredible. So let us consider these.