"I did."

"Now, Sir James, you, as a Blount, that is, as a man bearing an honoured
name, are under the strictest obligation to me to see that I can say, if
my conduct is challenged, that I saw nothing here because there was
nothing to see. I have put myself absolutely in your power, Sir James.
Whoever else joins the Prince, you must not, or you take my head along
with you."


It was well and truly said, and there was no posing about it. Sir James
Blount's problem was settled. He taught me something too, for all he did
was to put out his hand.

"There's an end of Tundish!" said Tiverton, grasping it firmly. "And it's
the best end too, for the Highland army hasn't a snowball's chance in
hell."

He turned at once to banter me on my indifference to art, seeing that I
had sniffed at a miniature by one of the most famous artists at the French
Court. I let him rattle on, for my eye was on Sir James, who was rolling
something in his hands. A moment later the Prince's letter went up in a
tongue of flame and burnt along with it the Jacobitism of the Blounts.

A knock at the door interrupted his lordship's valuation of art and
artists of the French school, and his sergeant entered to say that his men
were in the saddle.

"Campaigning be damned!" said his captain wearily.