enemy least expects you? And where would he expect me
less?"

"Faith, there is something in that, too!" cried the lawyer. "Ay,
certainly, a great deal in that. All the witnesses drowned but one, and
he safe in prison; you yourself changed beyond recognition--let us
hope--and walking the streets of the very town you have illustrated by
your--well, your eccentricity! It is not badly combined, indeed!"

"You approve it, then?" said I.

"O, approve!" said he; "there is no question of approval. There is only
one course which I could approve, and that were to escape to France
instanter."

"You do not wholly disapprove, at least?" I substituted.

"Not wholly; and it would not matter if I did," he replied. "Go your own
way; you are beyond argument. And I am not sure that you will run more
danger by that course than by any other. Give the servants time to get
to bed and fall asleep, then take a country cross-road and walk, as the
rhyme has it, like blazes all night. In the morning take a chaise or
take the mail at pleasure, and continue your journey with all the
decorum and reserve of which you shall be found capable."

"I am taking the picture in," I said. "Give me time. 'Tis the _tout
ensemble_ I must see: the whole as opposed to the details."

"Mountebank!" he murmured.

"Yes, I have it now; and I see myself with a servant, and that servant
is Rowley," said I.

"So as to have one more link with your uncle?" suggested the lawyer.
"Very judicious!"

"And, pardon me, but that is what it is," I exclaimed. "Judicious is the
word. I am not making a deception fit to last for thirty years; I do not
found a palace in the living granite for the night. This is a shelter
tent--a flying picture--seen, admired, and gone again in the wink of an
eye. What is wanted, in short, is a _trompe-l'oeil_ that shall be good
enough for twelve hours at an inn: is it not so?"

"It is, and the objection holds. Rowley is but another danger," said
Romaine.

"Rowley," said I, "will pass as a servant from a distance--as a creature
seen poised on the dicky of a bowling chaise. He will pass at hand as a
smart, civil fellow one meets in the inn corridor, and looks back at,
and asks, and is told, 'Gentleman's servant in Number 4.' He will pass,
in fact, all round, except with his personal friends! My dear sir, pray
what do you expect? Of course, if we meet my cousin, or if we meet
anybody who took part in the judicious exhibition of this evening,