"Yes," I said again, helplessly assenting; and there was an end of my fine evasion. I took it for a warning, and my clothes from my mail; and going down paid the porter a groat, and received in return a dozen porter's oaths. And so dismissed him and my plan together. CHAPTER XV It must be confessed that after that it was with a sore shrinking and foreboding of punishment I prepared to obey Mr. Ferguson's summons, and at the hour he had fixed knocked at his door. Hitherto he had always come to me; and even so and on my own ground I had suffered enough at his hands. What I had to expect, therefore, when entirely in his power I failed to guess, but on that account felt only the greater apprehension; so that it was with relief I recognised, firstly, as soon as I crossed the threshold, a peculiar neatness and cleanliness in the rooms, as if Ferguson at home were something different from Ferguson abroad; and secondly, that he was not alone, but entertained a visitor. Neither of these things, to be sure, altered his bearing towards me, or took from the brutality with which it was his humour to address me; but as his opening words announced that the visitor's business lay with me, they relieved me from my worst apprehension--namely, that I was to be called to account for the steps I had taken to escape; at the same time that they amused me with the hope of better treatment, since no man could deal with me worse than he had. "This is your man!" the plotter cried, lying back in his chair and pointing to me with the pipe he was smoking. "Never was such a brave conspirator! Name a rope and he will sweat! For my part, I wish you joy of him. Here, you, sirrah," he continued, addressing me, "this gentleman wishes to speak to you, and, mind you, you will do what he tells you, or----" But at that the gentleman cut him short with a deprecating gesture. "Softly, Mr. Ferguson, softly!" he said, and rose and bowed to me. Then I saw that he was the last comer of the three I had met in Covent Garden; and the one who had dismissed me. "You go too fast," he went on, smiling, "and give our friend here a wrong impression of me. Mr. Taylor, I----" But it was Ferguson's turn to take him up, which he did with a boisterous laugh. "Ho! Taylor! Taylor!" he cried in derision. "No more Taylor than I am haberdasher! The man's name----" "Is whatever he pleases," the stranger struck in, with another bow. "I neither ask it nor seek to know it. Such things between gentlemen and in these times are neither here nor there. It is enough and perhaps too much that I came to ask you to do me a favour and a service, Mr. Taylor, both of which are in your power."