His comrade, more broadly and squarely made in face as in body, a man serious and resolute in aspect, was similarly dressed, in clothes now in their decline but of a darker shade.
“Ay, alone here,” said he, putting his bag with the other’s, “but ’tis as well to leave off habits that may be dangerous. You might as easily break out into one of the old ditties in company as alone. I dare say nobody finds any harm in the mere singing of them; but ’tis apt to set people’s minds on certain matters, and we’d best not have them think of those matters in relation to us. We excite curiosity enough, I make no doubt.”
“Only your fancy, Will. Why should we excite more curiosity than any other two travellers?” said Charles. “What is so extraordinary in our appearance? Come, I’ve asked you a hundred times, and you can’t answer. Your constitutional prudence, your natural cautiousness, which you know I vastly admire and try to emulate—”
Will smiled at this.
“Those excellent traits of thine, dear lad,” Charles went on, “cause you to magnify things, or rather to transfigure them altogether, so that, if anybody looks at us, you see suspicion where there is really nothing but the careless curiosity of a moment. Where he says in his mind, ‘Strangers,’ you can almost hear him saying with his lips, ‘Jacobites.’”
“Hush! You may laugh as you please, Charles: prudence and caution, even carried to excess, are likelier to serve our turn than carelessness and boldness, till we are safe out of England.”
“Why, there again! You are more apprehensive a thousand times since we have crossed the border than you were during all the time in Scotland, all the hiding time, and the time of dodging enemies on the alert for us in every direction.”
“I confess it. As one nears the end of a difficult or dangerous business, one should be the more fearful of disaster. Think how it may turn to naught all the toils that have brought one so far. Never relax because the goal is in sight: if you trip at the last, and through your own folly, too, ’tis the more to be regretted.”
“All true, my dear Roughwood; and yet, for our peace of mind, ’tis comforting to think how much safer we really are in England than we were across the border. Nobody expects to find Jacobites on the highroads of England.”
“There have been far too many seen on the highroads of England lately,” said Roughwood, with a gloomy smile.