"Half a pint of gin, landlord," said he, in the deep, husky voice of Captain Jeremy Rofflash, and he strode towards the chimney corner of one of the settles, whence he could see the noisy party of drinkers and not be seen himself very well. The landlord brought the gin in a pewter pot and set it down on a ledge fixed to the chimney jamb. "See here, landlord," growled Rofflash, "d'ye know Mr. Jarvis?" "Sure, sir; 'tis he yonder with the lantern-jawed phizog." "Aye. Watch your chance when he's not talking to the rest and bid him look where I'm sitting. There's a shilling ready for you if you don't blunder." The landlord nodded and waddled towards the man he had pointed out. Jeremy Rofflash, it may be remarked, was a born spy and informer. His blood was tainted with treachery. Ten years before he had been employed by the Whig Government of George of Hanover to ferret out evidence--which not infrequently meant manufacturing it--against the Jacobites. Posing as a Jacobite, Rofflash wormed himself into the secrets of the conspirators, and he figured as an important witness against the rebel lords Derwentwater, Nithsdale, Carnwath and Wintoun. It was nothing for him to serve two masters and to play false to both, according as it best suited his own pocket. Sally Salisbury and Archibald Dorrimore were working in two different directions, and the ingenious Jeremy accommodated both. His scheming in Sally's interest had turned out to his and to her satisfaction, but not so that on behalf of Dorrimore. The captain had not reckoned upon Lavinia taking flight before he and his employer arrived on the scene. The plot of which she was the objective was common enough in those days of free and easy lovemaking. Merely an abduction. Rofflash had an intimate knowledge of Whitefriars, not then, perhaps, so lawless a place as in the times of the Stuarts, but sufficiently lawless for his purpose. Its ancient privileges which made it a sanctuary for all that was vile and criminal had not been entirely swept away. Rofflash knew of more than one infamous den to which Lavinia could be conveyed, and nobody be the wiser. The abduction plot had failed--for the present--and Rofflash, to pacify Dorrimore, went on another tack. In this he was personally interested. He saw his way to make use of Dorrimore to punish Vane for the humiliation Vane had cast upon him when they encountered each other on London Bridge. This humiliation was a double one. Vane had not merely knocked him down, but had rescued Lavinia under his very nose. The insult could only be washed out in blood, and the captain had been nursing his wrath ever since. But he was as great a coward as he was a braggart, and a fair fight was not to his taste. He was more at home in a stealthy approach under the cover of night, and a swift plunge of his sword before the enemy could turn and defend himself.