“Oh, he offered me anything in his gift if I brought the commission safely through to you,—a promise that I’m thinking I’ll never trouble him to redeem. Nevertheless, here’s the packet, a little damp, but none the worse for that.”
He placed the cause of all the trouble on the table, and Traquair turned it over and over in his hands, with no great delight in its possession, as the messenger thought. The Earl sighed as he opened it at last and slowly perused its contents in silence, laying it on the table again when he had finished.
“You’re a wonderful man, William,” he said. “If every one in Scotland did his duty as thoroughly as you do it, we would soon place the King on his throne again.”
“Is there more trouble brewing?”
“More trouble, and the old trouble, and the new trouble. Every one pulling his own way, and in all directions, thinking only of himself, and never by any chance of the interests of the whole.”
“May I tell Cromwell that? He seemed at some pains to intercept a billet that you receive but lightly.”
“Tell Cromwell! You’re never going to write to that scoundrel?”
“I intend to see him before the week is past.”
“What! You’re not such a fool as to put yourself in Cromwell’s clutch again?”
“Just that.”