36 A JACOBITE EXILE “¢Then, sir,’ Sir Marmaduke exclaimed, ‘you have found letters that I have never seen. You have found letters that must have been placed there by some scoundrel who plotted my tuin. J assert to you, on the honour of a gentleman, that no such letters have ever met my eye, and that if such a proposition had been made to me, I care not by whom, I would have struck to the ground the man who offered me such an insult.’ “We are sorry, Sir Marmaduke Carstairs,’ Mr. Peters said, ‘most sorry, both of us, that it should have fallen to our duty to take so painful a proceeding against a neigh- bour, but you see the matter is beyond us. We have received a sworn information that you are engaged in such a plot. Weare told that you are in the habit of locking up papers of importance in a certain cabinet, and there we find papers of a most damnatory kind. We most sincerely trust that you may be able to prove your innocence in the matter, but we have nothing to do but to take you with us as a prisoner to Lancaster.’ “Sir Marmaduke unbuckled his sword and laid it by. He was quieter than I thought he could be in such a strait, for he has always been by nature, as you know, choleric. ‘I am ready, gentlemen,’ he said. Peters whis- pered in Cockshaw’s ear. ‘Ah yes,’ the other said, ‘I had well-nigh forgotten,’ and he turned to me. ‘Where is Master Charles Carstairs?’ ‘He is not in the house,’ I said. ‘He rode away this morning and did not tell me where he was going.’ ‘When do you expect him back?’ ‘I do notexpect him at all,’ Isaid. ‘When Master Charles rides out to visit his friends he sometimes stays away for a day or two.’ “*Ts it supposed,’ Sir Marmaduke asked coldly, ‘that my son Is also mixed up in this precious scheme?’ “