During the next few days Harry was
kept hard at work delivering the various minute documents
which he had brought in the hollow of his stick.
Sometimes of an evening he attended his master to the
houses where he had taken such messages, and once
or twice was called in to be present at discussions,
and asked to explain various matters connected with
the position of the king. During this time he
saw but little of the apprentice Jacob, except at
his meals, and as the boy did not touch upon his frequent
absence, or make any allusion to political matters,
when in their bedroom alone at night, Harry hoped
that his suspicions had been allayed.
One morning, however, on waking up,
he saw the boy sitting upright in bed, staring fixedly
at him.
“What is the matter; Jacob, and what are you
doing?”
“I am wondering who and what you are!”
the boy said.
“I am Roger, your fellow apprentice,”
Harry replied, laughing.
“I am not sure that you are
Roger; I am not sure that you are an apprentice,”
the boy said. “But if you were, that would
not tell me who you are. If you were merely Roger
the apprentice, Dame Alice would not pick out all
the tit-bits at dinner, and put them on your plate,
while I and Master Hardwood have to put up with any
scraps which may come. Nor do I think that, even
for the purpose of carrying his cloak, our master
would take you with him constantly of an evening.
He seems mighty anxious too, for you to learn your
way about London. I do not remember that he showed
any such care as to my geographical knowledge.
But, of course, there is a mystery, and I want to
get to the bottom of it, and mean to do so if I can.”
“Even supposing that there was
a mystery,” Harry said, “what good would
it do to you to learn it, and what use would you make
of your knowledge?”
“I do not know,” the boy
said carelessly. “But knowledge is power.”
“You see,” Harry said,
“that supposing there were, as you say, a mystery,
the secret would not be mine to tell, and even were
it so before I told it, I should want to know whether
you desired to know it for the sake of aiding your
master, if possible, or of doing him an injury.
“I would do him no injury, assuredly,”
Jacob said. “Master Fleming is as good
a master as there is in London. I want to find
out, because it is my nature to find out. The
mere fact that there is a mystery excites my curiosity,
and compels me to do all in my power to get to the
bottom of it. Methinks that if you have aught
that you do not want known, it would be better to
take Jacob Plummer into your confidence. Many
a man’s head has been lost before now because
he did not know whom to trust.”
“There is no question of losing
heads in the matter,” Harry said, smiling.
“Well, you know best,”
Jacob replied, shrugging his shoulders; “but
heads do not seem very firmly on at present.”
When he went out with Master Fleming
that evening Harry related to him the conversation
which he had had with Jacob.
“What think you, Master Furness?
Is this malapert boy to be trusted, or not?”
“It were difficult to say, sir,”
Harry answered. “His suspicions are surely
roused, and as it seemed to me that his professions
of affection and duty toward yourself were earnest,
methinks that you might enlist him in your cause,
and would find him serviceable hereafter, did you
allow me frankly to speak to him. He has friends
among the apprentice boys, and might, should he be
mischievously inclined, set one to follow us of a
night, and learn whither you go; he might even now
do much mischief. I think that it is his nature
to love plotting for its own sake. He would rather
plot on your side than against it; but if you will
not have him, he may go against you.”
“I have a good mind to send
him home to his friends,” the merchant said.
“He can know nothing as yet.”
“He might denounce me as a Royalist,”
Harry said; “and you for harboring me.
I will sound him again to-night, and see further into
his intentions. But methinks it would be best
to trust him.”
That night the conversation was again renewed.
“You see, Jacob,” Harry
said, “that it would be a serious matter, supposing
what you think to be true, to intrust you with the
secret. I know not whether you are disposed toward
king or Parliament, and to put the lives of many honorable
gentlemen into the hands of one of whose real disposition
I know little would be but a fool’s trick.”
“You speak fairly, Roger,”
the boy said. “Indeed, What I said to you
was true. I trouble my head in no Way as to the
politics and squabbles of the present day; but I mean
to rise some day, and there is no better way to rise
than to be mixed up in a plot. It is true that
the rise may be to the gallows; but if one plays for
high stakes, one must risk one’s purse.
I love excitement, and believe that I am no fool.
I can at least be true to the side that I engage upon,
and of the two, would rather take that of the king
than of the Parliament, because it seems to me that
there are more fools on his side than on the other,
and therefore more chance for a wise head to prosper.”
Harry laughed.
“You have no small opinion of yourself, Master
Jacob.”
“No,” the boy said; “I
always found myself able to hold my own. My father,
who is a scrivener, predicted me that I should either
come to wealth or be hanged, and I am of the same
opinion myself.”
After further conversation next day
with the merchant, Harry frankly confided to Jacob
that evening that he was the bearer of letters from
the king. Of their contents he said that he knew
nothing; but had reason to believe that another movement
was on foot for bringing about the overthrow of the
party of Puritans who were in possession of the government
of London.
“I deemed that such was your
errand,” the boy said. “You played
your part well; but not well enough. You might
have deceived grown-up people; but you would hardly
take in a boy of your own age. Now that you have
told me frankly, I will, if I can, do anything to aid.
I care nothing for the opinions of one side or the
other; but as I have to go to the cathedral three
times on Sunday, and to sit each time for two hours
listening to the harangues of Master Ezekiel Proudfoot,
I would gladly join in anything which would be likely
to end by silencing that fellow and his gang.
It is monstrous that, upon the only day in the week
we have to ourselves, we should be compelled to undergo
the punishment of listening to these long-winded divines.”
When Harry was not engaged in taking
notes, backward and forward, between the merchant
and those with whom he was negotiating, he was occupied
in the shop. There the merchant kept up appearances
before the scrivener and any customers who might come
in, by instructing him in the mysteries of his trade;
by showing him the value of the different velvets
and silks; and by teaching him his private marks, by
which, in case of the absence of the merchant or his
apprentice, he could state the price of any article
to a trader who might come in. Harry judged, by
the conversations which he had with his host, that
the latter was not sanguine as to the success of the
negotiations which he was carrying on.
“If,” he said, “the
king could obtain one single victory, his friends
would raise their heads, and would assuredly be supported
by the great majority of the population, who wish
only for peace; but so long as the armies stood facing
each other, and the Puritans are all powerful in the
Parliament and Council of the city, men are afraid
to be the first to move, not being sure how popular
support would be given.”
One evening after work was over Harry
and Jacob walked together up the Cheap, and took their
place among a crowd listening to a preacher at Paul’s
Cross. He was evidently a popular character, and
a large number of grave men, of the straitest Puritan
appearance, were gathered round him.
“I wish we could play some trick
with these somber-looking knaves,” Jacob whispered.
“Yes,” Harry said; “I
would give much to be able to do so; but at the present
moment I scarcely wish to draw attention upon myself.”
“Let us get out of this, then,”
Jacob said, “if there is no fun to be had.
I am sick of these long-winded orations.”
They turned to go, and as they made
their way through the crowd, Harry trod upon the toe
of a small man in a high steeple hat and black coat.
“I beg your pardon,” Harry
said, as there burst from the lips of the little man
an exclamation which was somewhat less decorous than
would have been expected from a personage so gravely
clad. The little man stared Harry in the face,
and uttered another exclamation, this time of surprise.
Harry, to his dismay, saw that the man with whom he
had come in contact was the preacher whom he had left
gagged on the guardroom bed at Westminster.
“A traitor! A spy!”
shouted the preacher, at the top of his voice, seizing
Harry by the doublet. The latter shook himself
free just as Jacob, jumping in the air, brought his
hand down with all his force on the top of the steeple
hat, wedging it over the eyes of the little man.
Before any further effort could be made to seize them,
the two lads dived through the crowd, and dashed down
a lane leading toward the river.
This sudden interruption to the service
caused considerable excitement, and the little preacher,
on being extricated from his hat, furiously proclaimed
that the lad he had seized, dressed as an apprentice,
was a malignant, who had bean taken prisoner at Brentford,
and who had foully ill-treated him in a cell in the
guardroom at Finsbury. Instantly a number of
men set off in pursuit.
“What had we best do, Jacob?”
Harry said, as he heard the clattering of feet behind
them.
“We had best jump into a boat,”
Jacob said, “and row for it. It is dark
now, and we shall soon be out of their sight.”
At the bottom of the lane were some
stairs, and at these a number of boats. As it
was late in the evening, and the night a foul one,
the watermen, not anticipating fares, had left, and
the boys, leaping into a boat, put out the sculls,
and rowed into the stream, just as their pursuers
were heard coming down the lane.
“Which way shall we go?” Harry said.
“We had better shoot the bridge,” Jacob
replied. “Canst row well?”
“Yes,” Harry said; “I have practiced
at Abingdon with an oar.”
“Then take the sculls,”
Jacob said, “and I will steer. It is a risky
matter going through the bridge, I tell you, at half
tide. Sit steady, whatever you do. Here
they come in pursuit, Roger. Bend to the sculls,”
and in a couple of minutes they reached the bridge.
“Steady, steady,” shouted
Jacob, as the boat shot a fall, some eight feet in
depth, with the rapidity of an arrow. For a moment
it was tossed and whirled about in the seething waves
below, and then, thanks to Jacob’s presence
of mind and Harry’s obedience to his orders,
it emerged safely into the smooth water below the
bridge. Harry now gave up one of the sculls to
Jacob, and the two boys rowed hard down the stream.
“Will they follow, think you?” Harry said.
“I don’t think,”
Jacob laughed, “that any of those black-coated
gentry will care for shooting the bridge. They
will run down below, and take boat there; and as there
are sure to be hands waiting to carry fares out to
the ships in the pool, they will gain fast upon us
when ones they are under way.”
The wind was blowing briskly with
them, and the tide running strong, and at a great
pace they passed the ships lying at anchor.
“There is the Tower,”
Jacob said; “with whose inside we may chance
to make acquaintance, if we are caught, Look,”
he said, “there is a boat behind us, rowed by
four oars! I fear that it is our pursuers.”
“Had we not better land, and
take our chance?” Harry said.
“We might have done so at first,”
Jacob said; “it is too late now. We must
row for it. Look,” he continued, “there
is a bark coming along after the boat. She has
got her sails up already, and the wind is bringing
her along grandly. She sails faster than they
row, and if she comes up to us before they overtake
us, it may be that the captain will take us in tow.
These sea-dogs are always kindly.”
The boat that the boys had seized
was, fortunately, a very light and fast one, while
that in pursuit was large and heavy, and the four
watermen had to carry six sitters. Consequently,
they gained but very slowly upon the fugitives.
Presently a shot from a pistol whizzed over the boys’
heads.
“I did not bargain for this,
friend Roger,” Jacob said. “My head
is made rather for plots and conspiracies than for
withstanding the contact of lead.”
“Row away!” Harry said.
“Here is the ship just alongside now.”
As the vessel, which was a coaster,
came along, the crew looked over the side, their attention,
being called by the sound of the pistol and the shouts
of those in chase.
“Throw us a rope, sir,”
Jacob shouted. “We are not malefactors,
but have been up to a boyish freak, and shall be heavily
punished if we are caught.”
Again the pistol rang out behind,
and one of the Sailors threw a rope to the boys.
It was caught, and in a minute the boat was gliding
rapidly along in the wake of the ship. She was
then pulled up alongside, the boys clambered on board,
and the boat was sent adrift, The pursuers continued
the chase for a few minutes longer, but seeing the
ship gradually drawing away from them, they desisted,
and turned in toward shore.
“And who are you?” the captain of the
brig said.
“We are apprentices, as you
see,” Jacob said. “We were listening
to some preaching at Paul’s Cross. In trying
to get out from the throng being at length
weary of the long-winded talk of the preacher we
trod upon the feet of a worthy divine. He, refusing
to receive our apologies, took the matter roughly,
and seeing that the crowd of Puritans around were
going to treat us as malignant roisterers, we took
the liberty of driving the hat of our assailant over
his eyes, and bolting. Assuredly, had we been
caught, we should have been put in the stocks and whipped,
even if worse pains and penalties had not befallen
us, for ill-treatment of one of those who are now
the masters of London.”
“It was a foolish freak,”
the captain said, “and in these days such freaks
are treated as crimes. It is well that I came
along. What do you purpose to do now?”
“We would fain be put ashore,
sir, somewhere in Kent, so that we may make our way
back again. Our figures could not have been observed
beyond that we were apprentices, and we can enter
the city quietly, without fear of detection.”
The wind dropped in the evening, and,
the tide turning, the captain brought to anchor.
In the morning he sailed forward again. When he
neared Gravesend he saw a vessel lying in the stream.
“That is a Parliament ship,” he said.
At that moment another vessel of about
the same size as that in which they were was passing
her. She fired a gun, and the ship at once dropped
her sails and brought up.
“What can she be doing now,
arresting the passage of ships on their way down?
If your crime had been a serious one, I should have
thought that a message must have been brought down
in the night for her to search vessels coming down
stream for the persons of fugitives. What say
you, lads? Have you told me the truth?”
“We have told you the truth,
sir,” Harry said; “but not the whole truth.
The circumstances are exactly as my friend related
them. But he omitted to say that the preacher
recognized in me one of a Cavalier family, and that
they may suspect that I was in London on business of
the king’s.”
“Is that so?” the captain
said. “In that case, your position is a
perilous one. It is clear that they do not know
the name of the ship in which you are embarked, or
they would not have stopped the one which we see far
ahead. If they search the ship, they are sure
to find you.”
“Can you swim, Jacob?” Harry asked the
other.
He nodded.
“There is a point,” Harry
said, “between this and the vessel of war, and
if you sail close to that you will for a minute or
two be hidden from the view of those on her deck.
If you will take your ship close to that corner we
will jump overboard and swim on shore. If then
your vessel is stopped you can well say that you have
no fugitives on board, and let them search.”
The captain thought the plan a good
one, and at once the vessel’s head was steered
over toward the side to which Harry had pointed.
As they neared the corner they for a minute lost sight
of the hull of the man-of-war, and the boys, with
a word of thanks and farewell to the captain, plunged
over and swam to the bank, which was but some thirty
yards away. Climbing it, they lay down among the
grass, and watched the progress of the vessel.
She, like the one before, was brought up by a gun
from the man-of-war, and a boat from the latter put
out and remained by her side for half an hour.
Then they saw the boat return, the vessel hoist her
sails again, and go on her way.
“This is a nice position into
which you have brought me, Master Roger,” Jacob
said. “My first step in taking part in plots
and conspiracies does not appear to me to lead to
the end which I looked for. However, I am sick
of the shop, and shall be glad of a turn of freedom.
How let us make our way across the marshes to the
high land. It is but twenty miles to walk to
London, if that be really your intent.”
“I shall not return to London
myself,” Harry said; “but shall make my
way back to Oxford. It would be dangerous now
for me to appear, and I doubt not that a sharp hue
and cry will be kept up. In your case it is different,
for as you have been long an apprentice, and as your
face will be entirely unknown to any of them, there
will be little chance of your being detected.”
“I would much rather go with
you to Oxford,” the lad said. “I am
weary of velvets and silks, and though I do not know
that wars and battles will be more to my taste, I
would fain try them also. You are a gentleman,
and high in the trust of the king and those around
him. If you will take me with you as your servant
I will be a faithful knave to you, and doubt not that
as you profit by your advantages, some of the good
will fall to my share also.”
“In faith,” Harry said,
“I should hardly like you to be my servant,
Jacob, although I have no other office to bestow at
present. But if you come with me you shall be
rather in the light of a major-domo, though I
have no establishment of which you can be the head.
In these days, however, the distinctions of master
and servant are less broad than before, and in the
field we shall be companions rather than master and
follower. So, if you like to cast in your fortunes
with mine, here is my hand on it. You have already
proved your friendship to me as well as your quickness
and courage, and believe me, you will not find me or
my father ungrateful. But for you, I should now
be in the cells, and your old master in no slight
danger of finding himself in prison, to say nothing
of the upset of the negotiations for which I came to
London. Therefore, you have deserved well, not
only of me, but of the king, and the adventure may
not turn out so badly as it has begun. We had
best strike south, and go round by Tunbridge, and
thence keeping west, into Berkshire, and so to Oxford.
In this way we shall miss the Parliament men lying
round London, and those facing the Royalists between
Reading and Oxford.”
This order was carried out. The
lads met with but few questioners, and replying always
that they were London apprentices upon their way home
to visit their friends for a short time, passed unsuspected.
At first the want of funds had troubled them, for
Harry had forgotten the money sewn up in his shoe.
But presently, remembering this, and taking two gold
pieces out of their hiding-place, they went merrily
along the road and in five days from starting arrived
at Oxford.