CHAPTER XIII
PLOTS AND PRINCES
But the Duke of Lyonesse was not dead. He lay at the King's Arms in the town of Newton Douglas, well peppered with slugs, and swearing most royally. Lord Wargrove was alone in attendance upon him. One might well pity him, for his job was no pleasant one.
Eben the Spy had disappeared, and with him every stiver of the Prince's money, which had been kept in a leathern dispatch case carefully stowed beneath the seat of the carriage. His wallet of jewels, too, had vanished, so that the poor Duke had never a spare snuff-box or a change of rings.
More wonderful still was the official declaration made and sworn to before the Fiscal and Sheriff. The attack had been made entirely for the purpose of robbery, by Ebenezer McClure and a band of malefactors, collected by him for the purpose. In proof of which it was shown that the said Eben McClure had driven the carriage into a trap, previously laid with care in the dangerous defile of the White Water near where it enters into the loch of that name, that he had removed the Duke's treasure during the fight, and so escaped, mounted upon one of the horses which he had borrowed of his kinsman Kennedy of Supsorrow. The name of Patsy Ferris did not appear.
This explains why on arriving at Newton Douglas in search of his steeds, Kennedy McClure found himself pulled down from his horse, treated with much official roughness, and finally lodged in the townhouse awaiting his removal to the gaol of Wigton. He began to think that the fifty pounds which had been paid down by Eben of Stonykirk constituted but a feeble consolation for losses such as his. The Duke could not see him. My Lord of Wargrove would not, and Captain Laurence, to whom in desperation he made his plea, consigned him with extreme conciseness of speech to the deepest and hottest pit of Eblis.
All these things made no considerable stir in the little village of Newton Douglas, which was beginning to extend itself under the heights of Penninghame. The borough was proud of its guest, but what the Duke and his hench-man desired most of all was to be safely across Cree Bridge and to place a county or two between them and the wrath of Adam Ferris and his brother-in-law Julian Wemyss, whom they held to be answerable for the attack at the White Loch. So as soon as the wounded man could be moved, the best horses to be had in Minnigaff drew the coach gingerly across the bridge and out of immediate danger of pursuit.
The Duke thought it safest to make as little of the occurrence as possible. He had many debts, and the present loss of his treasures seemed a good chance to get the Government to pay off his creditors. He had, he was willing to swear, been bringing over from Ireland the moneys with which to conclude the arrangement. And now he had lost not only the treasure but his jewels as well, in the discharge of his duty to the King and the Houses of Parliament. What more fitting, therefore, than that the loss should be made good to him, together with some compensation for the wounds he had sustained in the defence of his creditors' property?
During the rest at Carlisle it was agreed that Lord Wargrove, in consultation with Mr. Robert Adam, the Duke's legal adviser and boon companion, should draw up a schedule of his losses—such as might be expected to pass the House of Commons without any of the unpleasant rakings up of the past which usually distinguished these periodical cleanings of the slate.