Part 2

"Aye; it was he, granny, or minions hired by him. But enough of that for the present. You have not spoken to our guest. Who think you he is?"

"Whoever he may be, if he helped you in danger, Robert, he is a good lad and we owe him thanks."

She swept me a stately curtsey such as might have graced a court ball at Versailles.

"No, the boot is on the other leg," I protested. "'Tis I who owe gratitude to Master Juggins, for he has taken me in out of the cold and the fog--and worse dangers perhaps."

"Poor young gentleman," she said softly. "For you are gentle, young sir. I did not live my youth in gentlefolks' houses for naught, and I can see gentility when it comes before my eyes, old though they be."

"You have not asked his name," suggested Master Juggins.

She looked at us inquiringly.

"'Tis Master Ormerod."

"Ormerod! Not----"

"Aye; Master Harry."

"But he is in France!"

"Nay; he is here."

"But----"

She drew closer, and studied my features under the candles that shone from the mantel-shelf.

"Is he in danger?" she asked breathlessly.

"The watch were after him when he came to my rescue," replied Juggins.

"Yet he came."

She patted my cheek with her hand.

"That was a deed which you need never be shamed of, Master Ormerod, and you shall win free to safety, whatever it may be or wherever, if Robert and I have any wits between us."

"But, granny," protested Juggins, "he is a rebel. He has just landed from France on a mission against the Crown."

"A rebel! Against the Crown?"

Her eyes flared.

"Tut! A likely tale! And what if he has? Is he not an Ormerod? His father's son!"

She wheeled around upon me.

"Your father was Sidney Ormerod!"

"Yes," I assented dazedly.

"Are you in truth a rebel!" she demanded without giving me time to catch my breath.

"Faith, I was one."

"But are you one now!"

"Not in my own heart; but the Bow Street runners think otherwise."

"A fig for them!" she cried. "Men have little enough sense, and when you place 'em in authority they grow imbecile. Sit yourself down again, Master Ormerod, the while I set a bandage about this arm of Robert's, and then you shall have a draft of mulled ale and a dish of deviled bones and thereafterward a bed with sheets that have lain in Dorset lavender. Hath it a welcome sound to you!"

The tears came into my eyes.

"I am happier this night than I have been any time since Charles and I left Foxcroft," I said. "But pray tell me why you two, who are strangers to me, should be so interested in an outcast?"

"He does not know?" exclaimed the little old lady.

"I have told him nothing," said Juggins, smiling.

"Tut, tut," she rebuked him. "Was it well to be tight-mouthed with an Ormerod?"

"I found him in the fog out there--or rather he found me," answered Jugging humorously. "And I did not know he was this side of St. Germain."

"Well, 'tis time enough he knew he was amongst the right sort of friends," the little lady said, her fingers all the time busied in adjusting bandages to the wounded arm. "You are too young, Master Ormerod, to remember old Peter Juggins----"

A light burst upon my addled wits.

"Why, of course!" I cried. "He was steward under my father, and in his father's time before him! But you?"

"Peter was my husband," she said simply. "Robert here is our grandson. As I said, sir, it was all too long ago for you to remember; but when Peter died your father offered his place to Robert. Robert would have none of it. He had the wandering bee in his bonnet. He was young, and he must see the world. He would make his fortune, too. No life as an estate steward for him."

"And wise I was, too, granny," interjected Master Juggins. "Even you will grant that now."

"Be not too elevated by your good fortune," she retorted. "Had you followed your grandfather at Foxcroft your counsel might have restrained Master Harry and his brother from their madness----"

"I wish it might have," I said bitterly, thinking of Charles' lonely grave on a mist-draped hillside in the Scotch Highlands.

"But in that case," Master Juggins gravely pointed out, "you would not have been at hand to rescue me tonight."

"Nor would you have been getting yourself mixed into intrigues which would place you in fear of assassination," she snapped. "Have done with your foolery, Robert. Master Ormerod knows naught of his father's kindness to you."

"He shall have earnest enough of it anon," returned Juggins heartily. "But do you go on, granny. You make a brave tale-teller."

She tweaked him by the ear as if he had been a small lad, gave a final pat to the neat bandage she had fastened over his wound and continued:

"Many a gentleman would have taken in bad part such an answer to an offer made in kindness, Master Ormerod. But not your father. No, after trying all he could by fair means to dissuade Robert from his course, he asked where his fancies drifted, and then supplied him with money for the voyage to the Western Plantations and to enable him to secure a start when he entered the wilderness."

"Granny still has the Londoner's idea of New York Province," explained Juggins humorously. "'Tis a wilderness in the Western Plantations. And in New York, which has grown a fine, thriving town since we wrested it from the Dutch, they regard England as a welcome market for furs over against the side of Europe."

"'Tis north of the Virginias and this side of the French settlements in Canada, is it not!" I asked, more in politeness than in interest.

"Aye, Master Ormerod; and you could drop all of England and Scotland and Wales into it, and then go out and win new lands from the savages if you felt over-crowded."

"Y'are driving beside the point, Robert," declared the little old lady with round displeasure. "Would you seek to belittle the generosity of Master Ormerod's father? No? Then have done."

She turned to me.

"Indeed," she added, "'tis as I have told you, sir; we are greatly indebted to you. All that you see here we owe to your father's kindness. 'Twas that permitted Robert to go overseas and to set himself up as a fur-trader there and afterwards to return and establish his business down-stairs, which hath grown so that it is more than he can handle--aye, and to become in good time, as he has, Warden of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Traders to the Western Plantations. All of it, I say, we owe to you."

"All of it, granny," reaffirmed Master Juggins himself. "Y'have not made it one whit too strong for me. But now, look you, Goody, the hour is late for old folks----"

"You are not so young yourself, Robert," she remarked tartly.

"Nay, granny dear, I do not seek the last word with you," he laughed. "'Tis only that I would find out before we sleep how I may be of aid to Master Ormerod."

"Aid?" quoth she. "All that we have in the world is his, if he wants it; aye, the clothes off our backs."

She swept me another curtsey, deeper than ever--just such a one, I fancy, as she made to my mother when she brought her the housekeeper's keys.

"Good night to you, Master Ormerod. And remember, this house, poor though it be for your father's son, is to be your home until you have a better."

I rose and bowed my acknowledgments, but I could not speak. My heart was too full. Here in this bleak, unfriendly London, which had greeted me with suspicion and persecution, I had found friendship and assistance. My fortunes, at ebb an hour before, now seemed about to flow toward a happier future. It was almost too good to believe.

"I have no claim upon you, Master Juggins," I exclaimed as the door closed behind his grandmother. "Remember that. And let me not imperil for one moment two friends of my father, who revere his memory as I had not supposed any did, save myself."

He pushed me down into my chair by the fire.

"There is no question of claim, sir. 'Tis a privilege. Now do you set this glass to your lips. How tastes it?"

"Most excellent. In France they must spice their mulled drinks to make them palatable. No need to add aught to good, ripe English ale."

"You have not lost the tongue of an Englishman, Master Ormerod, and for that let us be thankful. Aye, 'tis a crotchet of mine to drink a posset of ale, fetched from a brewer in Dorset whose ways are known to me, each night before I rest. It settles the digestion--although my friends the savages in North America do protest that naught is necessary upon retiring save a long drink of clear, cold water."

"You have fought hard for the comfort I see around me?" I suggested.

"Aye, but we shall have time anon to speak of that. Do you tell me now of your present plight. Fear not to be frank with me, Master Ormerod. I do not mix in politics. I am none of your red-hot loyalists who would hang a man because he remarks that our worthy King is Hanoverian by birth. But on the other hand I'll have naught to do with these plotters who fume over the exiled Stuarts.

"The Stuarts went, sir, because they over-taxed the forbearance of a long-suffering people. They might have returned ere this, as you know, had they possessed the good sense to appreciate what their whilom people required. But they lacked that good sense, Master Ormerod, and with all deference I say to you they will never return unless they learn that lesson--and abjure Popery--very soon."

I leaned forward in my chair and interrupted him, the words bubbling from my lips.

"I could not have put neater my own feelings, Master Juggins. When I was a lad not yet of age I risked all I had for the Stuart cause. What came of it? A life of exile that might have ruined me, as it has many a better man. My family's estate was sequestrated; my outlawry was proclaimed. I have no place to lay my head, save it be by the bounty of a foreigner.

"Have I secured any moral satisfaction by these sacrifices? At first I thought I had.

"They told me it was all for the Good Cause, the Cause that some day must triumph. The man you call the Pretender--it irks my lips to brand him so, despite how I have suffered in his name--took me by the hand, made me a chamberlain at his trumpery Court. I received a commission to fight under an English prince in foreign wars, mayhap against my own land. 'Tis only accident has averted that so far.

"But when I looked closer I found that I had done nothing for my country. For this prince, whom some men call King and some Pretender, yes. But for my country, nothing."

"This made me think the harder, Master Juggins. At the beginning I had taken zest in the plots and plans which were aimed to bring about his restoration to power.

"But the longer I studied them the more insincere they became. I found my leader a catspaw of foreigners, used to undermine England's prestige. His spies were in the pay of Papists. His aims were not the good of England, but his own aggrandizement, the winning back of my country to the Pope, the furthering of France's ambitions."

Master Juggins reached over and smote me on the knee.

"Hast learned that, lad? Why, then, there's no more loyal Englishman in London!"

"So you think," I answered. "So I think. But hear me out. I brought myself to abandon my friends in France, the only friends I had. I told my feelings to a certain great gentleman who handles affairs at St. Germain. He cursed me for a turncoat, would have ordered his lackeys to flog me from the palace. I left him--in disgrace. The doors of my friends were closed to me. I thought I would make my way to England and begin a new life.

"So I applied to the English ambassador for a passport. He laughed at me. Did I think he was so innocent as to be blinded by such transparent trickery? Nay, the Pretender must seek otherwhere, for means to plant a fresh spy in England. In desperation then I sold a miniature of my mother's----"

Master Juggins held up his hand.

"Where?" he asked eagerly.

"How?" I replied, not understanding.

"Where sold you this miniature? To what dealer!"

"'Twas a Jew named Levy close by the Quai de l'Horloge."

"Good," he said with satisfaction. "It shall be recovered."

"But, Master Juggins----"

"Tush, sir," he brushed my objection aside. "'Tis naught. Some day you shall refund the money, if you wish. But I would not have you lose the miniature. I loved your lady mother, if I may say so."

I pressed his hand, and struggled for words to answer. But he would have none, and insisted that I continue my story.

"So you secured funds?" he said. "And next?"

"I bought passage from a smuggler of Dieppe, who landed me three weeks since in Sussex. I made my way to Dorset, hoping to find old friends who would help me to gain a pardon; but in Dorchester High Street I was recognized by one of my cousins who now hold Foxcroft House, and he raised a hue and cry after me, fearing no doubt that I sought to regain the estate.

"Since then I have been hunted like a beast. My last shilling was spent this morning. Tomorrow, had I escaped so long, I planned to sell my sword, and if all else failed to seek a press-gang."

"Let us thank God you heard my cries," said Juggins earnestly.

He rose from his chair, a stout, square-built man with a shrewd, weather-beaten face and a manner of authority, despite the simplicity of his demeanor and attire.

"I do," I said, "and with no lack of reverence, my friend, I also thank you."

He gave me a keen look.

"You call me friend. Do you mean the word!"

"Why not?"

"I was your father's servant," he said, and he said it so that the words were at once proud and humble.

I caught his hand in mine.

"You were his friend, too; and who am I, an outlaw without name or fortune, to set myself above a man who has prospered like you through the diligence of his own hands and brains?"

Master Juggins drew a deep breath and wrung my hand hard.

"You'll do, lad," he said. "My help would have been yours on any terms. But you have made it a glad privilege for me to help you. Doubt not we shall find a way.

"Now get you to bed. I shall have somewhat to say to you on the morrow."

III

BEFORE THE LORDS OF TRADE

How long I might have slept I know not, but the pallid sun that strove to pierce the fog-reek proclaimed high noon when Master Juggins waked me. He would not listen to my protestations of regret, but directed my attention to the pile of clothes he carried over his arm.

"See, we shall make a 'prentice lad of you," he said. "I have a youth downstairs of about your build, and these are his Sunday clothes."

"But what will he do?" I asked.

"Why, purchase new gear with a right merry heart."

"And must I in truth wear these!" I demanded with some disgust as I felt their coarseness of texture.

"Aye, indeed, Master Harry."

His tone sobered.

"I have been abroad since rising," he continued, "and forgive me if I say 'twas well for you we met last night. Your cousin is come up to London, frantic with fear lest you should succeed in replacing him, and he hath pulled wires right and left, so that all are convinced you are here for no less a purpose than the murder of the King."

I cursed with a fluency conferred by two languages.

"There is no hope of a pardon now," proceeded Juggins. "I am not altogether without influence, and I had hoped-- But 'tis doubly hopeless. If you were Scots or Irish, it might be done. But few of the English gentry besides you and Master Charles rose in the '19. You are a marked man, and with your cousin's interest against you 'twill be impossible even to gain a hearing for you."

"There is naught to do, then, save go back to France and the friends who now distrust me," I said bitterly.

"Never say so," remonstrated Master Juggins with energy. "I have an idea of another course which may commend itself to you. Come, don these poor garments, which will none the less cloak you with safety, and join me in granny's morningroom."

The coffee which the old lady poured us in blue-bordered china bowls put new life and hope in me. I settled back in my chair, heedless of my baggy breeches and woolen stockings, and puffed at the long clay pipe which Juggins had filled for me.

Granny Juggins gave me an approving pat on the shoulder.

"That is well, Master Harry. Worry never solved any difficulty. And now I must be going about my duties; but remember that what Robert tells you hath my endorsement."

"And what is that?" I inquired in some curiosity as the door closed behind her.

He smoked in silence for several moments.

"I am resolved to take you fully into my confidence, Master Harry," he began at last, "and I should not do so if I doubted your discretion."

"I shall strive to justify your trust," I said.

"No doubt. 'Tis a delicate matter."

He fell silent again.

"Did it not seem strange to you that such an assault as you saw last night should have been made upon an ordinary merchant?" he asked suddenly.

"I thought they meant robbery."

"Robbery! They never made a demand upon me. They meant murder."

"That is strange," I conceded.

"The truth is, lad," he went on, "I am at grips with a deadly enemy. 'Tis a curious story, concerned with high politics, great spoils of trade, intrigues of Church and State--mayhap the future of a continent. And as it happens Robert Juggins is at the hub of it.

"Do you think you would like to play a hand--on England's behalf and to checkmate the very foreign influences which sickened you of the Jacobite cause? There are reasons why I think you might be of aid to me. I need a strong arm combined with an agile mind, a mind used to French ways and the French tongue."

I would have answered, but he checked me.

"If you accept you must be prepared to fight your old friends, for the enemy I have spoken of is Jacobite at heart and works under cover for the return of the Pretender through the weakening of England and the paramount influence of France. Remember that before you commit yourself.

"You must be prepared for no half-way measures. You have seen how my enemy fights. He does not stop at assassination. If you meet him weakly you will only insure your own death. On the other hand, if your efforts are successful you will have earned gratitude from the Government which should secure your pardon."

"Even as I told you last night, Master Juggins, I am for England now," I answered. "If such a plot as you speak of is under way, then surely 'tis for loyal Englishmen to thwart it. Count me with you, I pray."

"I will," he said quietly. "Now hark to these facts. At the instance of myself and my associates in the Company of Merchant Traders to the Western Plantations, the Provincial Government of New York several years ago secured the royal assent to a law prohibiting the sale of Indian trading-goods to the French in Canada.

"Our object was twofold. The best and cheapest trading-goods are manufactured in England. If we can keep them to ourselves and compel the French to use more costly and less durable goods made on the Continent we shall be able to underbid them with the Indians. So the fur-trade will come more and more into our hands."

"Is that so important?" I asked curiously.

"'Tis all-important, lad."

Juggins leaned forward and tapped me on the knee.

"North America," he went on, "is the richest land in all the world--how rich it is or how vast no man knows. 'Twill require centuries to exploit it. Since first we colonized there we have contended with France, not only for further power, but for the actual right to breath. Our two countries can not agree to divide this domain, limitless though it be. Sooner or later one must oust the other."

"But the fur-trade?" I insisted, my curiosity now fully aroused.

"Aye; the fur-trade is the key to it all. The English settled along the more southerly seaboard, with fertile lands, have devoted themselves mainly to farming. The French in Canada, with an inclement climate, have been driven to spread out their settlements in order to find room for subsistence. The English power is limited, but compact; the French is spread all around us. Both nations supplement their farming by trading with the savages for furs, and these furs are the principal export from New York to England.

"I said the fur-trade was the key. It is so, because neither the French nor we are yet sufficiently powerful to ignore the strength of the Indian tribes. The fur-trade is the source of the savages for securing trade-goods. They will be bound closest to the country which gives them the best terms. If we can deprive the French of the ability to buy their goods as cheaply as we do, then we shall be able to trade to better advantage, with the Indians and so increase their friendship for us. At the same time the volume of the provincial trade will be increased."

"I see," I answered. "But you spoke before of a two-fold object in depriving the French of the right to obtain trade-goods through New York?"

"So I did, and that brings me to the enemy whom I mentioned. Heard you ever in Paris of one Murray--Andrew Murray!"

I shook my head.

"He hath connections with the French, and, too, with the Jacobites; but they would be well covered, no doubt. Murray owns the Provincial Fur Company of New York, which is the largest of all the trading agencies. He hath set himself deliberately to drive out of existence all the independent traders and secure the entire trade for himself. The trade with the French in Canada likewise is in his hands.

"Before the Provincial Government passed the prohibitive law of which I spoke, he carried on this trade openly, and the French traders, helped by a government subsidy, more often than not underbid our traders--using English goods, mind you, for the purpose. And then the French traders would sell their skins in the London market at a lower price than our own traders could afford to charge.

"After the passage of the law, in spite of efforts to enforce it, Murray contrived to build up a clandestine means of shipping goods to Canada, and while the French are more pressed for cheap trade-goods than they were, nevertheless they are better off than they should be, and our traders are put at a disadvantage. Now the time for which the law was passed is expired, and the Provincial Government hath enacted it again. It comes up this afternoon before the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, when Murray will petition for its rejection."

"But surely he will lose," I objected.

Juggins shook his head.

"I fear not. The best we can hope for is a compromise."

"Yet you say he is in alliance with the French and the Jacobites!"

"I say that, Master Harry, but I can not prove it. Remember, even you, who have recently come from St. Germain, had never heard of him. Moreover, he is hand in glove with the Pelhams and all the corrupt officials in Whitehall. He hath buttered many a grasping hand, and if he can secure his operations a few years longer he will have laid the groundwork for England's overthrow in the New World.

"I leave to your imagination the effect upon our people at home of a disastrous war with France at this juncture. King George is scarce settled on his throne, and so good an excuse would pave the way for the Stuarts' return."

"And Murray?"

"So ambitious a man as he must have his object in view. He could ask a dukedom--whatever he willed."

"Yes, that is true," I assented. "'Tis a dangerous plot."

Juggins looked at me keenly.

"You are still desirous to join in thwarting it!"

"More so than ever. But I see not how I can be of service to you."

"If the Lords of Trade have received the orders I expect, then you can be of great service to me and to your country. For myself, I stand in no worse plight than the loss of some small sums of money, which I can do without at need. My interest is impersonal, Master Harry, and 'tis because he knows it to be so that Murray attempted my life last night."

"Let me call him out," I urged impetuously.

Juggins laughed.