'And you are in the right,' replied her ladyship. 'I know something of Mr. Scrope, and I will wager it was no cowardice made him run. I doubt you have not seen the last of Mr. Scrope. It is a passionate, determined sort of creature. He came to London a year or so agone. It was understood that he was a country gentleman with a comfortable estate in Leicestershire. He had laid his estate at Lady Oxford's feet, before she was as yet her ladyship. Lady Oxford would have it, and then would have none of it, and married the Earl. Well, he had been her valet for a season, and, I have no doubt, thought the service worth any price. She gave him her fan to hold, her gloves to caress, and what more can a man want? He spent much of his money, and some whisper that he turned informer afterwards.' 'Oh, did he?' asked Wogan, who was now yet more concerned that he had let the informer slip through his fingers. 'Yes. An informer for conscience' sake--a gentleman spy. His father died for Monmouth's affair. He has ever hated the Pretender and his cause. He is a Protestant and a fanatic.' Then she looked at Wogan and began to laugh. 'I would have given much to have seen you bouncing down the road after Mr. Scrope's chaise,' and she added seriously, 'But I doubt you have not heard the last of Mr. Scrope.' That also was Wogan's thought. For Lady Mary's story, though vague enough, was sufficiently clear to deepen his disquietude. Well, Mr. Wogan would get no comfort by the mere addling his brains with thinking of the matter, and he thrust it forth of his mind and went upon his way, that led him clean out of the path of this story for a while. He was despatched to Cadiz to take charge of a ship, and, in company with Captain Galloway of the _Resolution_, who was afterwards seized at Genoa, and Morgan, of the _Lady Mary_, he spent much fruitless time in cruising on and off the coasts of France, Spain, and Sweden. It was given out that they carried snuff, or were engaged in the Madagascar trade. But they took no cargoes aboard but barrels of powder and stands of arms, and waited on the Rising, which never came. There were weeks idled away at Morlaix, at Roscoff in Brittany, at Lisbon in Portugal, at Alicant Bay in Spain, until Wogan's heart grew sick with impatience. At rare times, when the venture wore a face of promise, the little fleet would run the hazard of the Channel and creep along the English coast, from Dartmouth, across the West Bay to Portland, from Portland on to the Isle of Wight. Mr. Wogan would pace the deck of his little ketch, _Fortune_, of a night, and as he looked at the quiet fields lying dark beneath the sky, would wonder how the world wagged for his friend the Parson, and whether my Lady Oxford was shaping it or no, until a longing would seize on him to drop a boat into the water and himself into the boat, and row ashore and see. But it was not for more than a full twelve months that his longing was