“Do not answer me now. Let what I have said sink home into your wits. Give it thought. We are not pressed for a few days. Ponder my words, and if as the days pass and no further news comes to you from Whitehall--no fulfilment of this airy promise--perhaps you will regard things differently, and come to see where your interest really lies. Remember, then, that we need skilled soldiers as leaders for our movement, and that an assured welcome awaits you. Remember, too--this for the mercenary you represent yourself--that the leaders now will be the leaders still when the task is accomplished, and that theirs will be the abiding rewards. Meanwhile, Randal, the bottle’s not half done. So sit you down again, and let us talk of other matters.” Going home towards dusk, the thing that most intrigued the Colonel was the dangerous frankness that Tucker had used with him, trusting a man in his desperate case with a secret so weighty upon no more than his pledged word and what Tucker remembered of him in the creditable state from which he had long since fallen. Reflection, however, diminished his wonder. Tucker had divulged no facts whose betrayal could seriously impair the plotters. He had mentioned no names; he had no more than vaguely alluded to a directing mind in Holland, which the Colonel guessed to be Algernon Sidney’s, who was beyond the reach of the Stuart arm. For the rest, what had he told him? That there was a serious movement afoot to overthrow the Stuart dynasty, and restore the Commonwealth. Let Holles carry that tale to the authorities, and what would happen? He could impeach by name no man but Tucker; and all he could say of Tucker was that Tucker had told him these things. Tucker’s word would be as good as Holles’s before a justice. On the score of credit, Holles’s antecedents would be the subject of inquiry, and the revelation of them would result in danger to himself alone. Tucker had not been as ingenuous and confiding as he had at first supposed. He laughed a little to himself at his own simplicity. Then laughed again as he reviewed the proposal Tucker had made him. He might be desperate, but not desperate enough for that--not yet. He caressed his neck affectionately. He had no mind to feel a rope tightening about it. Nor would he yet despair because of what Tucker, largely for the purposes of his own advocacy, had said of Albemarle. The more he considered it, away from Tucker now, the more persuaded was he of Albemarle’s sincerity and good intentions. CHAPTER VI MR. ETHEREDGE PRESCRIBES