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Updated: June 29, 2025
"Why, Denis, boy, you are not so bad as that. Here, Master Leoni, what have you to say?" "That he must rest two or three days at least, sir. His arm is badly wrenched, and he is not fit to sit a horse." "But he sat one bravely enough last night," cried the King. "But, Sir John, are all your roads like this?
"No!" shouted the King. "I told you I would go myself." "With a powerful following, Sire," cried Saint Simon, giving Leoni a triumphant look. "Let me choose and lead your bodyguard." Denis frowned and set his teeth hard in his annoyance at being passed in the race by his companion; but he brightened directly on hearing the King's next impatient words: "Hang your bodyguard! Leoni is right."
Leoni turned from him, walked slowly to the outer door, opened it as if about to pass out, and then closed it again, to return quickly to his two companions, and whispering softly in so low a voice that it was hard to hear: "By taking his place while he escapes, and personating him as he lies here bandaged, his face half hidden in the shadows of the heavy hangings of the bed in this darkened room."
"Lost!" sighed Leoni, as, utterly unnerved, he stood tightly pressing the King's wrist, unable even to stir, but listening to the sounds of voices which came weirdly and whispering along the gallery challenge, reply, and order of the changing guard.
Ellis's portrait in the first two editions is called Peffer. 'Admiral Walsingham boasted that he had entertained more miscellaneous parties than any other man in London. At one time he had received the Duke of Cumberland, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Nairne the optician, and Leoni the singer. It was at his table that Dr. Johnson made that excellent reply to a pert coxcomb who baited him during dinner.
There," he said, a few minutes later, after carefully securing the moistened linen so that it should not slip, and fastening the lad's doublet to his throat, "it feels better now, does it not?" "Better?" said Denis with a low hiss, and speaking through his teeth. "Why, it's as if a red-hot point was boring through my shoulder." "Yes," said Leoni, smiling; "and that's a good sign.
Denis made a sharp movement, catching the sleeve of his doublet against the copper fastening which held open the casement; and as he turned a nervous hand suddenly seized him by the shoulder in a painful grasp, for it was as if fingers of steel were pressing into his flesh. "You, Master Leoni!" he cried, as the clutch was relaxed as quickly as it came.
"One moment's thought," whispered back Leoni, speaking over his left shoulder, as he glared around for danger, his ears twitching the while like those of some wild animal which felt that there was peril in the air. "Now," he said, in a whisper just loud enough for the young man to hear, "if we go upward it is farther into the country, but harder work, for we are against the stream.
It was during one of these musing fits, when he was wondering, to use the homely phrase, how Denis was getting on, that Leoni, after a long silence, spoke out decisively. "We will wait till it is dark," he said. "It will not be long now and then row on through the night. It looks so clear that I expect we shall have the moon to help us on our way.
Leoni turned and gazed at him, and for a second the saturnine expression faded and a look of tenderness came over his features. "Until we meet again," he whispered. Then the door closed and the lad stood wondering whether the plan would succeed, whether the King would on the morrow be far on his way to the sea.
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