le. Well,
that's worse than t'other. Give me the King's Highway, I say! only
I'm too fat and pursy now."
This said, he went and called a little boy well trained in bearing
foaming pots from place to place, who soon conducted Wilton back in
safety to the house of the Duke, and then undertook to send up the
waterman with all speed. By this time the Messenger from the Earl of
Byerdale had arrived; but although the good gentlemen called
Messengers, in those days, exercised many of the functions of a
Bow-street officer, and possessed all the keen and cunning sagacity of
that two-legged race of ferrets, neither he nor Wilton could elicit
any farther information from the waterman than that which had been
already obtained.
"I think, sir, I think, your grace," said the Messenger, bowing low
to the statesman's secretary, and still lower to the Duke, "I think
that we must give the business up for to-night, for we shall make no
more of it. To-morrow morning, as early as you please, Mr. Brown, I
shall be ready to go down the river with you, and I think we had
better have this young man's boat, as he saw the barge which he
thinks took the young lady away. Hark ye, my man," he continued,
addressing the waterman, "you've seen fifty guineas, haven't you?"
"Why, never in my own hand, your honour," replied the man, with a
grin.
"Well, then, you'll see them in your hand, and your own money too, if
by your information we find out this young lady; so go away now, and
try to discover any one of your comrades who knows something of the
matter, and come with a wherry to the Duke's stairs to-morrow morning
as soon as it is daylight."
"Ay, ay, we'll find her, sir, I'll bet something," said the man; and
with this speech, the only consolatory one which had yet been made by
any of the party, he left them. The Messenger having now done all
that he thought sufficient, retired comfortably to repose, shaking
from his mind at once all recollection of a business in which his
heart took no part. Nothing on earth marks more distinctly that the
Spirit or the Soul, with all its fine sensibilities and qualities,
both of suffering and acting, is of distinct being from the mere
Intellect, which is, in fact, but the soul's prime minister, than the
manner in which two people of equal powers of mind will act in
circumstances where the welfare of a third person, dear to the one,
and not dear to the other, is concerned. A sense of what is right,
some accidental duty, or mere common philanthropy, m