ch a messenger to Whitehall with the letter within an hour."

"You perceive it, do you? And where the plague do you think Nick
Trenchard'll be what time that messenger rides?"

Mr. Wilding understood. "Aye, you may stare," sneered Trenchard. "A
letter that has once been stolen may be stolen again. The courier must
go by way of Walford. I had in my mind arranged the spot, close by the
ford, where I should fall upon him, rob him of his dispatches, and take
him--bound hand and foot if necessary--to Vallancey's, who lives close
by; and there I'd leave him until word came that the Duke had landed."

"That the Duke had landed?" cried Wilding. "You talk as though the thing
were imminent."

"And imminent it is. For aught we know he may be in England already."

Mr. Wilding laughed impatiently. "You must forever be building on these
crack-brained rumours, Nick," said he.

"Rumours!" roared the other. "Rumours? Ha!" He checked his wild scorn,
and proceeded in a different key. "I was forgetting. You do not know the
Contents of that stolen letter."

Wilding started. Underlying his disbelief in the talk of the
countryside, and even in the military measures which by the King's
orders were being taken in the West, was an uneasy dread lest they
should prove to be well founded, lest Argyle's operations in Scotland
should be but the forerunner of a rash and premature invasion by
Monmouth. He knew the Duke was surrounded by such reckless, foolhardy
counsellors as Grey and Ferguson--and yet he could not think the Duke
would ruin all by coming before he had definite word that his friends
were ready. He looked at Trenchard now with anxious eyes.

"Have you seen the letter, Nick?" he asked, and almost dreaded the
reply.

"Albemarle showed it me an hour ago," said Trenchard.

"And it contains?"

"The news we fear. It is in the Duke's own hand, and intimates that he
will follow it in a few days--in a few days, man in person."

Mr. Wilding clenched teeth and hands. "God help us all, then!" he
muttered grimly.

"Meanwhile," quoth Trenchard, bringing him back to the point, "there is
this precious business here. I had as choice a plan as could have been
devised, and it must have succeeded, had you not come blundering into it
to mar it all at the last moment. That fat fool Albemarle had swallowed
my impeachment like a draught of muscadine. Do you hear me?" he ended
sharply, for Mr. Wilding stood bemused, his thoughts plainly wandering.