Our road took us past the Rose Inn, and through a great part of the town, but no impression of either remains with me, my only recollection being of the sunshine that lay over the country, and of the happiness that all creation, all living things, save my doomed self, enjoyed. The bitterness of the thought that yesterday I had been as these, free to move and live and breathe, caused great tears to roll down my cheeks; but my companions, whose thoughts had already gone forward to the Steward's Room at Sir Winston's, and the entertainment they expected there, took little notice of me; and less after the porter at the lodge told them that there were grand doings at the house, and a great company, including a lord, come unexpectedly from London.
"I don't think ye'll be welcome," the porter added, looking curiously at me.
"Justice's business," the constable replied sturdily. "The King must be served."
"Ay, that is what you all say when you've something to gain by it," the porter retorted; and went in.
All which I heard idly; not supposing that it meant to me the difference between life and death, fortune and misery; or that in the company come unexpectedly from London lurked my salvation. If I dwelt on the news at all it was only as it might affect me by adding to the shame I felt. But in this I deceived myself; for when the ordeal of waiting in the servants' hall--where the maids pitied me and would have fed me if I could have eaten--was over, and we were ushered into the parlour in which Sir Winston, who had newly risen from dinner, would see us, we found only one gentleman with him.
The two stood at the farther end of a long narrow room, in the bay of a large window, that, open to the ground, permitted a view of cool sward and yew hedges. That they had had companions, lately withdrawn, was clear; and this, not only from the length of the table, which, bestrewn with plates and glasses and half-empty flagons, stretched up the room from us to them, but from two chairs, thrown down in the hurry of rising, and six or seven others thrust back, haphazard, against the panels. In the side of the room were four tall straight windows that allowed the sunshine to fall in regular bars on the table; and these, displaying here a little pool of spilled claret, and there a broken tobacco pipe, the ash still smouldering, gave a touch of grimness to the luxurious disorder.
The same incongruity was to be observed in the appearance of the elder and stouter of the two men; who had hung his periwig on the back of a chair, and showed a bald head and flushed face that agreed very ill with his laced cravat and embroidered coat. Standing with his feet apart and his arm outstretched, he was not immediately aware of our entrance; but continued to address his companion in words that were coherent, yet betrayed how he had been employed.
"Crop-eared knaves, my lord, half of them, and I one!" he cried, as we came to a halt a little within the door, to await his pleasure--I with shaking knees and sinking heart. "And ready to become the same again if the times call for it. For why? Because it was only so we could keep or get, my lord. And martyrs have been few in my time, though fools plenty."
"I should be sorry to deny the last, Sir Winston," his companion answered, smiling; for whom at the moment, blind bat as I was, I had no eyes, seeing in him only a noble youth, handsomely dressed and periwigged, and two, or it might be three years older than myself; whereas I hung on the Justice's nod. "But here is your case," the young man continued, turning to me, and speaking in a pleasant voice.