Hearing who he was, I stared at him in astonishment; but in astonishment largely leavened with fear and hatred; for I knew the reputation he enjoyed, and both what he had done, and of what he was suspected. That in all his adventures and intrigues he had borne a charmed life; and where Sidney and Russell, Argyle and Monmouth, Rumbold and Ayloffe had suffered on the scaffold, he had escaped scot free was one thing and certain; but that men accounted for this in strange ways was another scarcely less assured. While his friends maintained that he owed his immunity to a singular skill in disguise, his enemies, and men who were only so far his enemies as they were the enemies of all that was most base in human nature, asserted that this had little to do with it, but went so far as to say that in all his plots, with Russell and with Monmouth, with Argyle and with Ayloffe, he had played booty, and played the traitor: and tempting men, and inviting men to the gibbet, had taken good care to go one step farther--and by betraying them to secure his own neck from peril! CHAPTER XIII Such was the man I saw before me; on whose face, as if heaven purposed to warn his fellows against him, malignant passion and an insane vanity were so plainly stamped that party spirit must have gone to lengths, indeed, before it rendered men blind to his quality. His shambling gait seemed a fitting conveyance for a gaunt, stooping figure so awkward and uncouth that when he gave way to gesticulation it seemed to be moved by wires; yet, once he looked askance at you, face and figure were forgotten in the gleam of the eyes that, treacherous and cruel, leered at you from the penthouse of his huge, ill-fitting wig. Nevertheless, I confess that, while I hated and loathed the man, he cowed me. His latest escape had intoxicated him, and astride on my table, or stalking the floor, he gave way to his vanity. Pouring out a flood of ribald threats and imaginings, he now hinted at the fate which had never failed to befall those who thwarted him; now he boasted of his cunning and his hundred intrigues, and now he touched, not obscurely, on some great design soon to be executed. His audacity, no less than his frankness, bewildered me; for if he did not tell me all, he told enough, were it true, to hang a man. Yet I soon found that he had method in his madness; for while I listened with a shamefaced air, hating him and meditating informing against him the moment I was freed from his presence, he turned on me with a hideous grin, and thrusting the muzzle of his pistol against my temple, swore with endless curses to slay me if I betrayed him.