he, "carry this note to its destination with your own
hand. It is highly private. Find the person alone when you deliver it."

"Henry," says my lady, "you are not ill?"

"No, no," says he querulously, "I am occupied. Not at all; I am only
occupied. It is a singular thing a man must be supposed to be ill when
he has any business! Send me supper to this room, and a basket of wine:
I expect the visit of a friend. Otherwise I am not to be disturbed."

And with that he once more shut himself in.

The note was addressed to one Captain Harris, at a tavern on the
port-side. I knew Harris (by reputation) for a dangerous adventurer,
highly suspected of piracy in the past, and now following the rude
business of an Indian trader. What my lord should have to say to him, or
he to my lord, it passed my imagination to conceive: or yet how my lord
had heard of him, unless by a disgraceful trial from which the man was
recently escaped. Altogether I went upon the errand with reluctance, and
from the little I saw of the captain, returned from it with sorrow. I
found him in a foul-smelling chamber, sitting by a guttering candle and
an empty bottle; he had the remains of a military carriage, or rather
perhaps it was an affectation, for his manners were low.

"Tell my lord, with my service, that I will wait upon his lordship in
the inside of half an hour," says he when he had read the note; and then
had the servility, pointing to his empty bottle, to propose that I
should buy him liquor.

Although I returned with my best speed, the captain followed close upon
my heels, and he stayed late into the night. The cock was crowing a
second time when I saw (from my chamber window) my lord lighting him to
the gate, both men very much affected with their potations, and
sometimes leaning one upon the other to confabulate. Yet the next
morning my lord was abroad again early with a hundred pounds of money in
his pocket. I never supposed that he returned with it; and yet I was
quite sure it did not find its way to the Master, for I lingered all
morning within view of the booth. That was the last time my Lord
Durrisdeer passed his own enclosure till we left New York; he walked in
his barn, or sat and talked with his family, all much as usual; but the
town saw nothing of him, and his daily visits to the Master seemed
forgotten. Nor yet did Harris reappear; or not until the end.

I was now much oppressed with a sense of the mysteries in which we had
be