whatefer, I tell you plain. It is as this--so. If the Prince cross the
Trent, say I to myself, well and goot. He do his share. It is time for me
to do mine. It is better indeed, I tell you plain, to have it settled by a
simple thing like the Trent than to have it all muddled up by your
broblems. I can sing you off my ancestors by dozens, right back to the
standard-bearer of the great Llewellyn, but they're all dead, and indeed
I'm not going to poke about among their bones to find out what to do. I
look at your pretty river, and I wait."

Sir James had looked at him during this harangue with unconcealed
impatience.

"I sent a letter to Chartley of Chartley Towers," he said, "one of us,
and a strong one by all accounts. At any rate, my father always reckoned
him as such. So I asked him guardedly what he thought, and his reply was,
'The chestnut is on the hob. I am waiting to see whether it jumps into the
fire or into the fender.' I cannot decide by appealing to rivers or nuts.
There's much more in it than that."

Fate snatched the problem out of his hands. Without a tap, without a
word, the door of the room was flung open, and a dozen troopers filed
swiftly and silently in, and covered us with their carbines. An officer,
sword in hand, pushed through a gap in their line and stepped half a dozen
paces towards us. He saluted us ceremoniously with his sword and said, "In
the King's name!" Behind the line a man in citizen clothes hovered
uncertainly, and dim as the light was I made him out only too plainly. It
was the Government spy, Weir. My goose was cooked. I had played for life's
highest stake, and thrown amb's ace. It was good-bye to Margaret.

The Welshman stuck to his chair, stolid as his native hills. Master