CHAPTER VIII.

A PLOT.

We must return to the Manor of New Connaught upon the Elk River.

There we shall find a sorrowful household.  The Lord of the Manor is in captivity; his people are dejected with a presentiment that they are to see him no more; his wife is lamenting with her children, and counting the weary days of his imprisonment.

  “His hounds they all run masterless,
  His hawks they flee from tree to tree.”

Everything in the hospitable woodland home is changed.  November, December, January had passed by since Talbot was lodged in the Gloucester prison, and still no hope dawned upon the afflicted lady.  The forest around her bowled with the rush of the winter wind, but neither the wilderness nor the winter was so desolate as her own heart.  The fate of her husband was in the hands of his enemies.  She trembled at the thought of his being forced to a trial for his life in Virginia, where he would be deprived of that friendly sympathy so necessary even to the vindication of innocence, and where he ran the risk of being condemned without defence, upon the testimony of exasperated opponents.

But she was a strong-hearted and resolute woman, and would not despair.  She had many friends around her,—­friends devoted to her husband and herself.  Amongst these was Phelim Murray, a cornet of cavalry under the command of Talbot,—­a brave, reckless, true-hearted comrade, who had often shared the hospitality, the adventurous service, and the sports of his commander.

To Murray I attribute the planning of the enterprise I am now about to relate.  He had determined to rescue his chief from his prison in Virginia.  His scheme required the cooeperation of Mrs. Talbot and one of her youngest children,—­the pet boy, perhaps, of the family, some two or three years old,—­I imagine, the special favorite of the father.  The adventure was a bold one, involving many hardships and perils.  Towards the end of January, the lady, accompanied by her boy with his nurse, and attended by two Irish men-servants, repaired to St. Mary’s, where she was doubtless received as a guest in the mansion of the Proprietary, now the residence of young Benedict Leonard and those of the family who had not accompanied Lord Baltimore to England.

Whilst Mrs. Talbot tarried here, the Cornet was busy in his preparations.  He had brought the Colonel’s shallop from Elk River to the Patuxent, and was here concerting a plan to put the little vessel under the command of some ostensible owner who might appear in the character of its master to any over-curious or inopportune questioner.  He had found a man exactly to his hand in a certain Roger Skreene, whose name might almost be thought to be adopted for the occasion and to express the part he had to act.  He was what we may call the sloop’s husband, but was bound to do whatever Murray commanded, to ask no questions,