"To Saturday's work! A straight eye and a firm hand!" he cried. "Drink man, drink! For a hunting we will go, and a hunting we will go! And if we don't flush the game at Turnham Green, call me a bungler!"
I heard one of the elder men protest, with something between a curse and a groan, that the fool would proclaim it at Charing Cross next; but, thinking only to be gone (and the man being so drunk that it was evident resistance would but render him more obstinate, and imperil my skin), I took the cup and drank, and gave it back to him. By that time two or three of the more prudent--if any in that company could be called prudent--had risen and joined us; who when he would have given another toast, forced him away, scolding him soundly for a leaky chatterer, and a fool who would ruin all with the drink.
Freed from his importunities, I waited for no second permission; but got me out and down the stairs. At the foot of which the landlord's scared face and the waiting, watching eyes of the drawers and servants, who still lingered there, listening, put the last touch to the picture of madness and recklessness I had witnessed above. Here were informers and evidences ready to hand and more than enough, if the beggars in the street, and the orange girls, and night walkers who prowled the market were not sufficient, to bring home to its authors the treason they bawled and shouted overhead.
The thought that such rogues should endanger my neck, and good, honest men's necks, made my blood run cold and hot at once; hot, when I thought of their folly, cold, when I recalled Mr. Ashton executed in '90 for carrying treasonable letters, or Anderton, betrayed, and done to death for printing the like. I could understand Ferguson's methods; they had reason in them, and if I hated them and loathed them, they were not so very dangerous. For he had disguises and many names and lodgings, and lurked from one to another under cover of night; and if he sowed treason, he sowed it stealthily and in darkness, with all the adjuncts which prudence and tradition dictated; he boasted to those only whom he had in his power, and used the like instruments. But the outbreak of noisy, rampant, reckless rebellion which I had witnessed--and which it seemed to me must be known to all London within twenty-four hours--filled me with panic. It so put me beside myself, that when the girl who had employed me on that errand met me in the street, I cursed her and would have passed her; being unable to say another word, lest I should weep. But she turned with me, and keeping pace with me asked me continually what it was; and getting no answer, by-and-by caught my arm, and forced me to stand in the passage beyond Bedford House and close to the Strand. Here she repeated her question so fiercely--asking me besides if I were mad, and the like--and showed herself such a termagant, that I had no option but to answer her.
"Mad?" I cried, passionately. "Aye, I am mad--to have anything to do with such as you."
"But what is it? What has happened?" she persisted, peering at me; and so barring the way that I could not pass.
"Could you not hear?"
"I could hear that they were drinking," she answered. "I knew that, and therefore I thought that you should go to them."
"And run the risk?"
"Well, you are a man," she answered coolly.