"Indeed it is goot," said he. "To hell with your words and your broblems. They are of no use whatefer, whatefer. Our good friend, Sir James, is up to his neck in broblems like a man in a bog, and he cannot move. Now I have not your broblems. To hell with your broblems. My Cousin Wynne is full of 'em, and he's still gaping up at the cloud on Snowdon, while I'm here, ready. I say plain: if the Prince cross south of the Trent I will join him." "Why the Trent?" said I. "It is my mark. It is my way of knowing what I will do. It is all so simple. Indeed I am a simple man, not a broblem in my brain, none whatefer, I tell you plain. It is as this--so. If the Prince cross the Trent, say I to myself, well and goot. He do his share. It is time for me to do mine. It is better indeed, I tell you plain, to have it settled by a simple thing like the Trent than to have it all muddled up by your broblems. I can sing you off my ancestors by dozens, right back to the standard-bearer of the great Llewellyn, but they're all dead, and indeed I'm not going to poke about among their bones to find out what to do. I look at your pretty river, and I wait." Sir James had looked at him during this harangue with unconcealed impatience. "I sent a letter to Chartley of Chartley Towers," he said, "one of us, and a strong one by all accounts. At any rate, my father always reckoned him as such. So I asked him guardedly what he thought, and his reply was, 'The chestnut is on the hob. I am waiting to see whether it jumps into the fire or into the fender.' I cannot decide by appealing to rivers or nuts. There's much more in it than that." Fate snatched the problem out of his hands. Without a tap, without a word, the door of the room was flung open, and a dozen troopers filed swiftly and silently in, and covered us with their carbines. An officer, sword in hand, pushed through a gap in their line and stepped half a dozen paces towards us. He saluted us ceremoniously with his sword and said, "In the King's name!" Behind the line a man in citizen clothes hovered uncertainly, and dim as the light was I made him out only too plainly. It was the Government spy, Weir. My goose was cooked. I had played for life's highest stake, and thrown amb's ace. It was good-bye to Margaret. The Welshman stuck to his chair, stolid as his native hills. Master Freake, whose back was to the new-comers, made a swift half turn, and then he, too, settled down again as indifferently as if the interruption had only been old Inskip with the bedward candles. Blount leaped to his feet, livid with rage, and strode up to the officer. "My Lord Tiverton, what does this intrusion mean?" he demanded. "It means," was the composed reply, "that if any one of you makes the slightest attempt to resist, he will be shot out of hand. Close up, lads, and cover your men!"