He leaned forward and said impressively, "The gibbet, Mr. Wheatman!" "Draughty places!" said I, smiling, as I thought of Nance Lousely. "I can feel the wind whistling through my bones." "You are pleased to be facetious, sir. It does credit, I must say, to your nerves." "You are pleased to be sympathetic, my lord," I riposted, "whereby you do no credit to my common sense." He took short breaths and then reflected a minute or two, during which I clinked a soft tattoo with my iron wristlets, and eyed him joyously. He was there--a free lordling, I was here--a chained rebel, but I had him set. "I have a proposal to make to you, Mr. Wheatman," he said at length. "I am indeed honoured, but be careful, my lord! It's not in the least likely, I fear, to be a proposal which you would like the sentry beneath the window to overhear." "You are plain and blunt," he said, leaning forward and speaking in a low tone, "and I will be the same. Return me all the papers you took from my sergeant at the 'Ring of Bells,' and I will see that you escape and get clear of the country." "The different personal ends for which you are anxious to turn traitor seem innumerable, my lord!" He met the taunt as if it had been a flip with a straw, and only said, "Is it a bargain?" "It is not," I replied emphatically. If his life rather than his lands had depended on the recovery of the letter he could not have been more eager. For a long time he pleaded and wrestled with me; arguing, bullying, imploring, threatening, turn and turn about, but to no result. I would not go back on my casual word to Master Freake. The letter was important to him, and he would save Margaret and the Colonel, and me too, when the inevitable hour of need should come at last. Money was power, and lands were more than money. Acres meant votes, and with votes at your command you had ministers at your beck. I was sure of Master Freake. Why bother about my lord Brocton? At last he played his last card. "You shall have the Upper Hanyards back again, Master Wheatman," he quavered. The rascal earl, his father, had juggled more than a thousand acres of the Hanyards away from my father by some musty process of law and a venal bench. The reference angered me, and I cried loudly, "You shall not have it back at any price!" He looked at the window, and paled as he thought of the sentinel ears without. Then he went off, vomiting curses. That day week, she brought me a shepherd's pie for dinner, very well made too, and a mug of ale not wholly unworthy of the name. She put them down, looked at me in a measure womanly, and smiled. It was a root of promise and fruit would follow. Any change would be welcome. I was ragged, dirty, galled, cramped, and bearded with a red stubble. She called me 'Carrots' in derision. I was right. At evening she brought me up a dish of tea, and when I lifted it off the table to take a drink of it, there was beneath it a paper folded letter-fashion.