"He's a damned good fellow. He gave me another six months without a murmur. Wish I'd known! There'd have been no campaigning for me. I prefer the Mall!" So he said now, yet he was as steady as a wall and as bold as a lion at Culloden. He came of a great stock, and greatness was natural to him. The play-acting and gaming was only the fringe that Society had tacked on to him. It lessoned me finely to see him when Sir James came back into the room. Tiverton knew the position by instinct. "Sir James," he said, "I crave a word with you." "At your service, my lord." "I will be frank," continued his lordship. "I ask no questions. I make no inferences. I simply point out that the spy fell to pieces because he found Mr. Freake here." "I observed so much, my lord!" "I don't know why," said the Marquess dubiously. "I could hang him at the next assizes," interrupted Master Freake. "I see. He doesn't want to be hanged, of course. No one does. It's a perfectly natural feeling. So he crumpled up at the prospect." "Yes, my lord," said Sir James. "I allowed him to crumple up, and I took full advantage of the fact. You saw so much?" "I did." "Now, Sir James, you, as a Blount, that is, as a man bearing an honoured name, are under the strictest obligation to me to see that I can say, if my conduct is challenged, that I saw nothing here because there was nothing to see. I have put myself absolutely in your power, Sir James. Whoever else joins the Prince, you must not, or you take my head along with you." It was well and truly said, and there was no posing about it. Sir James Blount's problem was settled. He taught me something too, for all he did was to put out his hand. "There's an end of Tundish!" said Tiverton, grasping it firmly. "And it's the best end too, for the Highland army hasn't a snowball's chance in hell." He turned at once to banter me on my indifference to art, seeing that I had sniffed at a miniature by one of the most famous artists at the French Court. I let him rattle on, for my eye was on Sir James, who was rolling something in his hands. A moment later the Prince's letter went up in a tongue of flame and burnt along with it the Jacobitism of the Blounts. A knock at the door interrupted his lordship's valuation of art and artists of the French school, and his sergeant entered to say that his men were in the saddle. "Campaigning be damned!" said his captain wearily. "Beg pardon, my lord," added the sergeant, "but Mr. What's-his-name has cut off." "Good riddance. He's gone back to his crony at the 'Black Swan.'" "Yes, my lord. T'other's a sergeant in my Lord Brocton's dragoons." "Ah, I saw they were hob-and-nob together. A fellow with a ditch in his face you could lay a finger in!" Fortunately for me, the Marquess was busy with a last glass of wine. Here was ill news with a vengeance. I had got out of the smoke into the smother.