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Updated: June 27, 2025
Master Freake walked at my saddle till we were out of earshot of the group in the open doorway. "We meet again at Derby, Oliver," he said, holding out his hand. "That's good news, sir. I shall be there by six o'clock to-night." "Keep a good look out for the sergeant. He and his precious master mean to have you if they can. They've a heavy score against you, lad."
Master Freake looked at him with a sedate half-smile, and said, "How d'ye do, my lord?" "Very well, thankee!" cried his lordship gaily, too gaily. "Damme! It's the funniest thing that's happened since Noah came out of the Ark. Come here, spy! Mean to tell me this is a Jacobite?" As the spy crept near, Master Freake stood up, wheeled round on him smartly, and said, "How d'ye do, Turnditch?"
"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."
'On the second occasion we had Freake and Dashwood, naming two well-known English antiquarians. 'Very learned, very jealous, and very snuffy; altogether "too genuine," as poor mother used to say of those old chairs we got for the dining-room. But afterwards when we were all smoking in the library, the squire came out of his shell and talked. I never heard him more brilliant!
"Sir," said I to him, with much politeness, "you are tired by the exertions of the evening. But I like a man who sticks up for his commander, and desire to have the honour of drinking your health." And I toasted him complacently, smiling the while into his little pig's eyes. This terminated the trouble, which Master Freake had watched with quiet amusement.
"For your offence in thus hindering our matters of state we commit you to ward, and straightly charge our loyal subject, Master Wheatman, to hold you safe in keeping till after supper, when we will undertake to show you that our Highland reel can be as graceful as your Italian fandango." So, in great good humour, he went off with the Colonel and Master Freake.
They come back to me now the line of blue-and-white troopers, still with levelled carbines; the stolid Welshman, as indifferent as Snowdon; the dapper nobleman, still polished and lightsome, no longer play-acting but rather vaguely anxious; the high-minded troubled Jacobite, fear for his wife and babe gnawing at his heart; the spy, Weir or Turnditch, with the noose he had made for another drawn round his own neck; Master John Freake, the quiet, Quakerlike merchant, whose power was rooted deep in those far haunts of the world's trade, so that we were here shadowed and protected by the uttermost branches thereof.
The farther a town was from them the more it funked them, which was, as everybody knows now, truest of all of London. As I turned up the lane by St. Giles', the church bells chimed two. Past the church in the corner between the lane and the High Street was the "Rising Sun." Once Sultan was safe in its stables I could set about getting news of the Colonel before Margaret and Master Freake arrived.
True, I was in my best clothes my Sunday clothes, as I should have called them at home and they were none so bad; but they had been made in Boston, where fashions ranged on the sober side. Here I looked like a sparrow in a flight of bull-finches. "Can I see Master Freake?" said I. "No," said he, with uncompromising promptness. "Is he at home?" "No," he retorted. "This is his house, I think?"
However, though I would have robbed Master Freake willingly enough, my blood being up and he a manifest Hanoverian, I was not going to see Brocton's ruffians rob him, much less kill him. The purse must wait, and when I took it for take it I must God would perchance balance one thing against the other.
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