“If it be her Majesty the Queen that you fear to name, Mr. Secretary,” interrupted the King, “it is but vain to fence.  Do your duty, as you have ever done.”

“With your Majesty’s leave, I will name no one, save it be one Mr. Cooly, Secretary to the Lord Jermyn, whom your Majesty, doubtless, graciously recollects.  Our informant was plainly asked by this gentleman, how the islanders would take it if there should be an overture of giving them up to the French.”

“This is but talk,” observed the King.

“Nay Sir, there is yet more.  This letter, which is come to one of us in cypher, goes on to tell that it hath been heard, from a very good source, that the chief mover herein is to be made Duke and Peer of France, and receive 200,000 pistoles, for which he is to deliver up not Jersey only but Guernsey, Aurigny, and Serk.  Nay, further, his Eminence Cardinal Mazarine hath taken up ships for the transport of 2,000 French soldiers, nominally for the service of your Majesty, actually for the service whereof we are now speaking.”

“Let them come,” said Charles.  “We will put ourself at their head and fall upon Guernsey, that nest of Roundheads where Osborne and honest Baldwin Wake have borne so long the brunt of insult and privation.”

“Under your favour, Sir,” broke in Carteret, “you would be bubbled.  I have seen and spoke with a known creature of my Lord Jermyn’s; and I know well that the design of the French is—­so to speak—­to clap your Majesty under the hatches, and to steer the vessel on their own account.  Mr. La Cloche shall answer for this,” he added in a lower tone.

“By your leave again, Sir George,” put in the beaming Secretary, “we lawyers are to speak by our calling.  It is not indeed, Sir, that my Lord Jermyn hath made direct overtures to us.  And ’tis to be thought that in this last respect the messenger spoke but according to his own understanding.”

“I would cut every throat in the island,” cried Carteret, with savage interruption....

“Sir George Cartwright’s zeal hath eaten him up,” said Nicholas with a twinkle of his merry eye.  “Let it suffice that the concurrent information of divers persons (and they strangers to one another), together with the Lord Jermyn’s total neglect of the island in regard of the provisions that he hath not sent as promised nor repaid sums of money lent to your service by the people, have led us to sign a paper of association for which we shall crave your gracious approval.  We doubt not you will agree with us that the delivery of the islands to the French is not consistent with the duty and fidelity of Englishmen, and would be an irreparable loss to the nation besides being an indelible dishonour to the Crown.”

As Charles took the paper handed him for perusal by Nicholas, a flush arose upon his swarthy countenance.

“Enough said, my Lords and gentlemen!  We need not that any should instruct us as to our duty.”