Whatever the scheme in his mind, however, and whether he was, as I expected, as ready to sell the Duke of Berwick as to plot with him, he said no more to me on the subject; but presently went to his own room. Thus left, I thought it high time to consider where I stood, being all of a tremble and twitter with what I had heard and seen; and I tossed through the night, fearfully sounding the depths in which I found myself, and striving to gain strength to battle with the stream that day by day was forcing me farther and farther from the land. I was no boy or fool, unaware of the danger of being mixed up with great men and great names; rather the ten years during which I had followed public affairs had presented me with only too many examples of the iron pot and clay pitcher. When, therefore, I slept at last, late in the evening, it was to dream of the sledge and Tyburn road and the Ordinary--who bore in my dream a marvellous likeness to Mr. Brome--and a wall of faces that lined the way and never ceased from St. Giles's Pound to the Edgeware Road. Such a dream, taken with my night's thoughts, left me eager to put in execution a plan I had more than once considered; which was to give up all, to fly from London, and hiding myself in some quiet place under another name, to live as I best might until Ferguson's capture, or a change in the state of affairs freed me from danger. At a distance from him I might even gain courage to inform against him; but this I left for future decision, the main thing now being to pack my clothes, secure about me the money I had saved, which amounted to thirty guineas, and escape from the town on foot or in a stage-wagon without any of his myrmidons being the wiser. To adopt this course was to lose Mr. Brome's friendship and the livelihood which his employment provided; but such was the fear I had conceived of Ferguson's schemes and the perils they involved that I scarcely hesitated. Before noon, an hour which I thought least open to suspicion, I had engaged a porter and bidden him wait below, had made all my other arrangements, and in five minutes I should have been safe in the streets with my face set towards Kensington--when, at the last moment, there came a tap at my door and a voice asked if I was in. It was not an hour at which Ferguson had ever troubled me, and trusting to this I had not been careful to hide the signs of removal which my room presented. For a moment I hung over my trunk, panic-stricken; then the door opened, and admitted the girl who had intervened once before--I mean at the door of the Secretary's office--and whom I had since noticed, but not often, going in at the opposite rooms. She curtseyed demurely, standing in the doorway, and said that Mr. Smith--which was one of the names by which Ferguson went--had sent her to me with a message. "Yes," I said, forcing myself to speak. "Would you please to wait on him this evening at eight," she answered. "He wishes to speak with you."