Guided now unreservedly by his cousin’s counsel, Sir Walter set out with him upon that journey to London. Captain King went with them, as well as Sir Walter’s body-servant, Cotterell, and a Frenchman named Manourie, who had made his first appearance in the Plymouth household on the previous day. Stukeley explained the fellow as a gifted man of medicine, whom he had sent for to cure him of a trivial but inconvenient ailment by which he was afflicted. Journeying by slow stages, as Sir Lewis had directed, they came at last to Brentford. Sir Walter, had he followed his own bent, would have journeyed more slowly still, for in a measure, as he neared London, apprehensions of what might await him there grew ever darker. He spoke of them to King, and the blunt Captain said nothing to dispel them. “You are being led like a sheep to the shambles,” he declared, “and you go like a sheep. You should have landed in France, where you have friends. Even now it is not too late. A ship could be procured...” “And my honour could be sunk at sea,” Sir Walter harshly concluded, in reproof of such counsel. But at the inn at Brentford he was sought out by a visitor, who brought him the like advice in rather different terms. This was De Chesne, the secretary of the French envoy, Le Clerc. Cordially welcomed by Ralegh, the Frenchman expressed his deep concern to see Sir Walter under arrest. “You conclude too hastily,” laughed Sir Walter. “Monsieur, I do not conclude. I speak of what I am inform’.” “Misinformed, sir. I am not a prisoner—at least, not yet,” he added, with a sigh. “I travel of my own free will to London with my good friend and kinsman Stukeley to lay the account of my voyage before the King.” “Of your own free will? You travel of your own free will? And you are not a prisoner? Ha!” There was bitter mockery in De Chesne’s short laugh. “C’est bien drole!” And he explained: “Milord the Duke o Buckingham, he has write in his master’s name to the ambassador Gondomar that you are taken and held at the disposal of the King of Spain. Gondomar is to inform him whether King Philip wish that you be sent to Spain to essay the justice of his Catholic Majesty, or that you suffer here. Meanwhile your quarters are being made ready in the Tower. Yet you tell me you are not prisoner! You go of your own free will to London. Sir Walter, do not be deceive’. If you reach London, you are lost.” Now here was news to shatter Sir Walter’s last illusion. Yet desperately he clung to the fragments of it. The envoy’s secretary must be at fault. “’Tis yourself are at fault, Sir Walter, in that you trust those about you,” the Frenchman insisted. Sir Walter stared at him, frowning. “D’ye mean Stukeley?” quoth he, half-indignant already at the mere suggestion. “Sir Lewis, he is your kinsman.” De Chesne shrugged. “You should know your family better than I. But who is this Manourie who accompanies you? Where is he come from? What you know of him?”