“You haven’t been killing any one, have you?” the captain asked.  “I don’t want to have trouble when I come back here, for carrying off malefactors.”

“No, indeed,” Harry said, as he lightly leaped on the deck.  “I am Sir Harry Furness, though I may not look it, and am bound to England on urgent business.  It is all right, my good fellow, and here is earnest money for my passage,” and he placed two pieces of gold in the captain’s hand.

“That will do,” the captain said.  “I will take you.”

Harry went to the side.

“Here, my man, is your money, and a crown piece beside.  Go to the Hotel des Etoiles and ask for the English officer who is there lying sick.  Tell him Colonel Furness has been forced to leave for England at a moment’s notice, but will be back by the first ship.”

The man nodded, and rowed back to shore as the Mary Anne, with her sails hoisted, ran down the river.

Never did a voyage appear longer to an anxious passenger than did that of the Mary Anne to England.  The winds were light and baffling, and at times the Mary Anne scarce moved through the water.  Harry had no love for Cromwell.  Upon the contrary, he regarded him as the deadliest enemy of the king, and moreover personally hated him for the cruel massacre of Drogheda.  In battle he would have gladly slain him, but he was determined to save him from assassination.  He felt the man to be a great Englishman, and knew that it was greatly due to his counsels that so little English blood had been shed upon the scaffold.  Most of all, he thought that his assassination would injure the royal cause.  The time was not yet ripe for a restoration.  England had shown but lately that there existed no enthusiasm for the royal cause.  At Cromwell’s death the chief power would fall into the hands of fanatics more dangerous and more violent than he.  His murder would be used as a weapon for a wholesale persecution of the Royalists throughout the land, and would create such a prejudice against them that the inevitable reaction in favor of royalty would be retarded for years.  Full of these thoughts, Harry fretted and fumed over the slow progress of the Mary Anne.  Late on Saturday night she entered the mouth of the Thames, and anchored until the tide turned.  Before daybreak she was on her way, and bore up on the tide as far as Gravesend, when she had again to anchor.  Harry obtained a boat and was rowed to shore.  In his present appearance, he did not like to go to one of the principal inns for a horse, but entering a small one on the outskirts of the place, asked the landlord if he could procure him a horse.

“I am not what I seem,” he said, in answer to his host’s look of surprise.  “But I have urgent need to get to London this evening.  I will pay well for the horse, and will leave this ring with you as a guarantee for his safe return.”

“I have not a horse myself,” the landlord said, with more respect than he had at first shown; “but I might get one from my neighbor Harry Fletcher, the butcher.  Are you willing to pay a guinea for his use?  Fletcher will drive you himself.”