Trenchard stamped his foot; indeed, he almost danced in the excess of his vexation. "Left them where they stood!" he echoed. "Body o' me! Where are your wits? Left them where they stood! And at any moment you might have been taken unawares as a consequence of this accusation being lodged against you by Richard or by Blake. Then the Cause would have been betrayed, indeed."
"Not more so than it is now.
"Not less, at least," snapped the player. "You give me credit for no more wit than yourself. Do you think that I am the man to do things by halves? I have betrayed the plot to Albemarle; but do you imagine I have made no provision for what must follow?"
"Provision?" echoed Wilding, staring.
"Aye, provision. God lack! What do you suppose Albemarle will do?"
"Dispatch 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.