That worthy nodded, pocketing his box and incidentally making a great jingling of coins.

“Then,” quoth MacLean, “since I prefer to travel alone, twill wait here until you have passed the rolling-house in the distance yonder.  Good-day to you!”

He seated himself upon the stump of a tree, and, giving all his attention to the snow, began to whistle a thoughtful air.  Hugon glanced at him with fierce black eyes and twitching lips, much desiring a quarrel; then thought better of it, and before the tune had come to an end was making with his long and noiseless stride his lonely way to Williamsburgh, and the ordinary in Nicholson Street.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PLAYER

About this time, Mr. Charles Stagg, of the Williamsburgh theatre in Virginia, sent by the Horn of Plenty, bound for London, a long letter to an ancient comrade and player of small parts at Drury Lane.  A few days later, young Mr. Lee, writing by the Golden Lucy to an agreeable rake of his acquaintance, burst into a five-page panegyric upon the Arpasia, the Belvidera, the Monimia, who had so marvelously dawned upon the colonial horizon.  The recipient of this communication, being a frequenter of Button’s, and chancing one day to crack a bottle there with Mr. Colley Cibber, drew from his pocket and read to that gentleman the eulogy of Darden’s Audrey, with the remark that the writer was an Oxford man and must know whereof he wrote.

Cibber borrowed the letter, and the next day, in the company of Wilks and a bottle of Burgundy, compared it with that of Mr. Charles Stagg,—­the latter’s correspondent having also brought the matter to the great man’s notice.

“She might offset that pretty jade Fenton at the Fields, eh, Bob?” said Cibber.  “They’re of an age.  If the town took to her”—­

“If her Belvidera made one pretty fellow weep, why not another?” added Wilks.  “Here—­where is’t he says that, when she went out, for many moments the pit was silent as the grave—­and that then the applause was deep—­not shrill—­and very long?  ’Gad, if ’tis a Barry come again, and we could lay hands on her, the house would be made!”

Gibber sighed.  “You’re dreaming, Bob,” he said good-humoredly. “’Twas but a pack of Virginia planters, noisy over some belle sauvage with a ranting tongue.”

“Men’s passions are the same, I take it, in Virginia as in London,” answered the other.  “If the belle sauvage can move to that manner of applause in one spot of earth, she may do so in another.  And here again he says, ’A dark beauty, with a strange, alluring air ... a voice of melting sweetness that yet can so express anguish and fear that the blood turns cold and the heart is wrung to hear it’—­Zoons, sir!  What would it cost to buy off this fellow Stagg, and to bring the phoenix overseas?”

“Something more than a lottery ticket,” laughed the other, and beckoned to the drawer.  “We’ll wait, Bob, until we’re sure ’tis a phoenix indeed!  There’s a gentleman in Virginia with whom I’ve some acquaintance, Colonel William Byrd, that was the colony’s agent here.  I’ll write to him for a true account.  There’s time enough.”