Master Freake knew him to the bottom of his muddy soul. My
Lord Tiverton was a man of another mould, but he too was in the hands of
his master. Plain John Freake, citizen of London, had taken a hand in this
game of fate, and had thrown double six.
This noble room had seen the agonizings and rejoicings of a dozen
generations of the sons of men, but nothing to surpass this scene in
living interest. They come back to me now--the line of blue-and-white
troopers, still with levelled carbines; the stolid Welshman, as
indifferent as Snowdon; the dapper nobleman, still polished and lightsome,
no longer play-acting but rather vaguely anxious; the high-minded troubled
Jacobite, fear for his wife and babe gnawing at his heart; the spy, Weir
or Turnditch, with the noose he had made for another drawn round his own
neck; Master John Freake, the quiet, Quakerlike merchant, whose power was
rooted deep in those far haunts of the world's trade, so that we were here
shadowed and protected by the uttermost branches thereof. Last of all I
remember myself, with my heart thrumming good-morrow to Margaret.
"Come now, Houndsditch, or Turndish, or whatever it is," said his
lordship.
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