"No," I said, with a loudness and boldness that surprised me. "No lodger, my man?" "None!" "Right!" he answered. "Good-night, and God save King William!" "Amen!" quoth I; and then, and not before, my knees began to shake. However, it no longer mattered, for before I could believe that the danger was over they were gone and had closed the door; and I caught a sniggering laugh behind the curtain. Still they had gone no farther than the stairs; I heard them knock on the opposite door and troop in there, and I caught the tones of a woman's voice, young and fresh, answering them. But in a minute they came out again, apparently satisfied, and crowded down stairs; whereon the man behind the curtain laughed again, and swaggering out, Bobadil-like, shook his fist with furious gestures after them. "Damn your King William, and you too!" he cried in ferocious triumph. "One of these days God will squeeze him like the rotten orange he is; and if God will not, I will! I, Robert Ferguson! Trot, for the set of pudding-headed blind-eyed moles that you are! Call yourselves constables! Bah! But as for you, my friend," he continued, turning to me and throwing his pistol with a crash on the table, "you have more spunk than I thought you had, and spoke up like a gentleman of mettle. There is my hand on it!" My throat was so dry that I could not speak, but I gave him my hand. He gripped it and threw it from him with a boastful gesture, and stalking to the farther side of the room and back again, "There!" cried he. "Now you can say that you have touched hands with Ferguson, the famous Ferguson, the Ferguson on whose head a thousand guineas have been set! Ferguson the Kingmaker, who defied three Kings and made three Kings and will yet make a fourth! Fire and furies, do a set of boozing tipstaves think to take the man who outwitted Jeffreys and slipped through Kirke's lambs?" [Illustration: "DAMN YOUR KING WILLIAM, AND YOU TOO!" HE CRIED]