land--Heaven help us all." Having written, he lay back in his chair and
mused.

When Colonel Flowerdue entered he found a brisk and smiling gentleman,
sealing a letter.

"Can you spare a man to ride express with this missive to town? It is
for General Cromwell's private hand."

"Assuredly. He will start at once lest the storm worsens. It is business
of State?"

"High business of State, and I think the last I am likely to meddle
with."

Mr. Lovel had taken from his finger a thick gold ring carved with a
much-worn cognisance. He held it up in the light of the candle.

"This thing was once a king's," he said. "As the letter touches the
affairs of his Majesty, I think it fitting to seal it with a king's
signet."

CHAPTER 10. THE MARPLOT

At a little after six o'clock on the evening of Saturday, 12th October,
in the year 1678, the man known commonly as Edward Copshaw came to a
halt opposite the narrow entry of the Savoy, just west of the Queen's
palace of Somerset House. He was a personage of many names. In the
register of the Benedictine lay-brothers he had been entered as James
Singleton. Sundry Paris tradesmen had known him as Captain Edwards, and
at the moment were longing to know more of him. In a certain secret and
tortuous correspondence he figured as Octavius, and you may still read
his sprawling script in the Record Office. His true name, which was
Nicholas Lovel, was known at Weld House, at the White Horse Tavern, and
the town lodgings of my lords Powis and Bellasis, but had you asked for
him by that name at these quarters you would have been met by a denial
of all knowledge. For it was a name which for good reasons he and his
patrons desired to have forgotten.

He was a man of not yet forty, furtive, ill-looking and lean to
emaciation. In complexion he was as swarthy as the King, and his
feverish black eyes were set deep under his bushy brows. A badly dressed
peruke concealed his hair. His clothes were the remnants of old finery,
well cut and of good stuff, but patched and threadbare. He wore a sword,
and carried a stout rustic staff. The weather was warm for October,
and the man had been walking fast, for, as he peered through the autumn
brume into the dark entry, he mopped his face with a dirty handkerchief.

The exercise had brought back his ailment and he shivered violently.
Punctually as autumn came round he had these fevers, the legacy of a
year once spent in the Pisan marshes. He had doped