and look our
parts better. We had better separate when we get there, and watch
the entrances to the palace, gazing about like rustics; then we
can get into a conversation with any servant that we see, and try
and find out from which door members of the council usually issue,
and at about what hour. We could succeed without that, because we
should notice the chairs waiting for them. Still, it is as well
that we should get all the information we can. There will be,
doubtless, personages leaving who have been with the Princess
Anne. They might go out by another entrance, and therefore we
should miss our man."

"You will have more than the two chair men to deal with, your
honour, for there are sure to be two link men with the chair."

"Well, it will be as easy to dispose of four men as of two, Mike."

"Every bit, your honour, and the more of them the more divarsion."

An hour later they set out, now so well disguised that no one
would have dreamt that the three Irishmen were officers in a
French regiment; and before noon Desmond succeeded in obtaining,
from a scullion employed in the palace, the particulars that he
required. On saying that he had but just come to London, and
wanted to get a sight of the great people, the present of a
shilling sufficed to extract the information from the boy; and
Desmond then rejoined his companions, and they at once returned to
their lodgings, where they found Mike awaiting them.

"I have managed it, your honour, but it will cost twelve louis. I
went to the man from whom I got the saws, and he said at once that
the affair could be managed easily, and, sure enough, he took me
to the shop of a man who, he said, sometimes acted with cracksmen.
The fellow was sharp enough to see, at once, that it was something
special that we wanted the horses for, but after some bargaining
he agreed to do it for twelve gold pieces, and, if necessary, to
get a change of horses twice on the road. He will be ready with
his cart at twelve o'clock, a hundred yards or so outside the last
houses on the south side of the Old Kent Road. I could not tell
him which port you would go to, but he said from there he could go
to Dover, or turn off so as to make for Southampton or Weymouth.
It is to be twelve pounds if it is to Dover or Southampton;
fifteen pounds if it is to Weymouth."

"That is satisfactory," Desmond said. "Now we have nothing else to
do till ten o'clock tonight, when, as the boy said, the council
g