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Updated: May 28, 2025
He paced up and down the room with long angry strides, muttering words I did not understand. Suddenly he stopped, and turned on me with the smiling, princely face of the greater Charles I knew and liked. "Curse me for an ingrate! I am heartily obliged to you, Captain Wheatman, for your pains. My lord speaks of you in high terms of praise. And I must not keep you. Murray must have his answer.
It was a lucky hit, for when I had in solemn whispers rolled off the great lines in the sixth Aeneid which foretell the work and glory of Rome, I thought of my Lord Ridgeley, thiever by cunning process of law of most of my ancient patrimony, and his blackguard son, my Lord Brocton, lustfully hunting the proud, gracious woman beneath, and I said grandiosely to myself, "Rome's destiny is thine too, Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards, and these betitled scullions are the proud ones you shall war down."
He was leisurely filling his pipe, an example which Margaret, with a smile and a nod, gave me permission to follow. "Tell us how you escaped," said Margaret. "Master Wheatman cannot too soon begin to learn the tricks of the trade. Sorry, dad," bending to kiss his hand; "you needn't look at me in German. I mean rudiments of the profession."
"Life turns on trifles, Master Wheatman, and to a pretty girl's sisterly jest I owe everything that has happened since I first saw you on the river bank." "We owe it, madam," I corrected gently, and I turned to go on, for I saw that she was moved and troubled at the evil she thought she had brought on me. Evil!
Straight up to my mother she walked, a poor word to describe her sweet and stately motion, et vera incessu patuit dea, as the master has it, curtsied low and nobly to her and said, "Mistress Wheatman, I am a stranger in distress, and should have been in danger but for your son, who has served me and saved me as only a brave and courteous gentleman could."
There was a silence for some minutes, busy minutes for me with an apple tart that was sublime with some cream to it, and I was settling down to the sweet content of the well-fed when Sir James broke out. "Mr. Wheatman has brought me an invitation, hardly to be distinguished from a command, to meet His Royal Highness at the Poles' place tomorrow."
"You are, Master Oliver Wheatman," said Master Freake, "the future, rightful owner of the ancient estate of your family in all its former amplitude; and all arrearages of rents and incomings as from the thirteenth of April, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-two, with compound interest at the rate of ten per cent per annum, together with a compensation for disturbance and vexation caused to you and yours, provisionally fixed in the sum of two thousand pounds.
I shook it heartily and then burst out laughing, and laughed on till tears stood in my eyes. And this was the end of my highwaymanship! "Since the danger is, thanks to you, over, Master Wheatman," he said, "I would e'en like to share your mirth if I may." "Sir," I replied, "I am laughing because I have saved you from robbers." "But why laugh?"
"I have seen to-day, Master Wheatman," she said, "a sight I have never seen before a beautiful English maiden growing up to womanhood in the calm and safety of an English country home. You will be tempted, I know, to envy me my wanderings, my experiences, my freedom, but, believe me, I would rather be your sweet Kate in the quiet of the Hanyards."
I checked him at once, but, in that trice of time, a man leaped from behind a pillar, laid one hand on the pommel of my saddle, and raised the other in warning. He was a little man, and in his eagerness he stood on tiptoe and whispered, "Ride on, Master Wheatman! One second may cost you dear!"
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