“You’ll run into trouble yet, I’m fearing,” said Roughwood, with solicitude and affection in his smile.
“As for mere busybodies here in England,” Charles Everell continued, apparently bent upon disposing of every class from which discovery might be possible; “people to whom the idea of fugitive Jacobites might occur at this time, they will not look to find officers travelling openly as gentlemen. They will suppose that fugitives of our quality, if any fled into England at all, would come disguised. Going boldly in the dress and manner of gentlemen, wearing swords and showing no secrecy, how can we excite suspicion? We have nothing to fear but some unlucky chance meeting, like that we galloped away from yesterday; and the same accident is not like to befall us again.”
“But if that fellow who recognized you should have taken it into his head to hound us?”
“Is he likely to have put himself to the trouble? Doubtless he has his own affairs to pursue. Be that as it may, we got rid of him easily enough by spurring our horses and turning out of the road at the next byway; and, if forced to it, we can do so again.”
“We may not have the same advantage again. If there had been anybody at hand yesterday, I am sure he would have called out and denounced us. I don’t forget his look when he first saw us, as he stood in front of that wayside ale-house. He was about touching his hat to us as we rode up, when he beheld your face. His hand remained fixed in the air, and he stared as if you had been the devil. Then he glanced wildly around, and in at the ale-house door; he was certainly looking to see if help was in call.”
“’Twas a question for an instant whether I should run my sword through him,” said Everell, “but thank God such impulses never prevail with me. So I merely decided not to stop at that house of refreshment, and gave my horse the spur. And you were good enough to follow without question, which speaks well for your wisdom and my own, my dear Will. Always do so, and we shall always have similar good fortune in escaping the perils that beset us.”
“I would I knew what our guide thought of the incident, and of our bribing him to let his horses come so far out of the way.”
“He thought merely as I told him, no doubt:—in the first case, that my horse bolted, and that I took it as an omen against stopping there; in the second, that we really had a friend whose house we thought to find by turning out of the way. But whatever he may have thought, he was a mum fellow, and doubtless went to bed as soon as we arrived at last night’s inn; therefore he probably had no speech with the lad who took his place this morning.”
“Well, well,” said Roughwood, smilingly resigning himself to the other’s sense of security, “I hope your confidence will be justified to the end of the journey. But when we come to my own county, where I am well known, there indeed we must needs go warily.”
“Why, then, of course, we shall stir only by night,” said Everell. “And we shall not tarry long, if all goes well.”