no need
of desperate haste, as was shown when presently orders came to Brentford
for the disposal of the prisoner. The King, who was at Salisbury,
desired that Sir Walter should be conveyed to his own house in London.
Stukeley reported this to him, proclaiming it a sign of royal favour.
Sir Walter was not deceived. He knew the reason to be fear lest he
should infect the Tower with the plague by which he was reported
stricken.

So the journey was resumed, and Sir Walter was brought to London, and
safely bestowed in his own house, but ever in the care of his loving
friend and kinsman. Manourie's part being fulfilled and the aim
accomplished, Sir Walter completed the promised payment by bestowing
upon him the second diamond--a form of eminently portable currency with
which the knight was well supplied. On the morrow Manourie was gone,
dismissed as a consequence of the part he had played.

It was Stukeley who told Sir Walter this--a very well informed and
injured Stukeley, who asked to know what he had done to forfeit the
knight's confidence that behind his back Sir Walter secretly concerted
means of escape. Had his cousin ceased to trust him?

Sir Walter wondered. Looking into that lean, crafty face, he considered
King's unquenchable mistrust of the man, bethought him of his kinsman's
general neediness, remembered past events that shed light upon his ways
and nature, and began now at last to have a sense of the man's hypocrisy
and double-dealing. Yet he reasoned in regard to him precisely as he
had reasoned in regard to Manourie. The fellow was acquisitive, and
therefore corruptible. If, indeed, he was so base that he had been
bought to betray Sir Walter, then he could be bought again to betray
those who had so bought him.

"Nay, nay," said Sir Walter easily. "It is not lack of trust in you, my
good friend. But you are the holder of an office, and knowing as I do
the upright honesty of your character I feared to embarrass you with
things whose very knowledge must give you the parlous choice of being
false to that office or false to me."

Stukeley broke forth into imprecations. He was, he vowed, the most
accursed and miserable of men that such a task as this should have
fallen to his lot. And he was a poor man, too, he would have his cousin
remember. It was unthinkable that he should use the knowledge he had
gained to attempt to frustrate Sir Walter's plans of escape to France.
And this notwithstanding that if Sir Wa