“Egad, Richard,” said my Lord, when we had got to my lodgings, “I made him change colour, did I not?  Do you know how the little fool looks to me?  ’Od’s life, he looks hunted, and cursed near brought to earth.  We must fetch this thing to a point, Richard.  And I am wondering what Chartersea’s next move will be,” he added thoughtfully.

CHAPTER XXXIX

HOLLAND HOUSE

On the morrow, as I was setting out to dine at Brooks’s, I received the following on a torn slip of paper:  “Dear Richard, we shall have a good show to-day you may care to see.”  It was signed “Fox,” and dated at St. Stephen’s.  I lost no time in riding to Westminster, where I found a flock of excited people in Parliament Street and in the Palace Yard.  And on climbing the wide stone steps outside and a narrower flight within I was admitted directly into the august presence of the representatives of the English people.  They were in a most prodigious and unseemly state of uproar.

What a place is old St. Stephen’s Chapel, over St. Mary’s in the Vaults, for the great Commons of England to gather!  It is scarce larger or more imposing than our own assembly room in the Stadt House in Annapolis.  St. Stephen’s measures but ten yards by thirty, with a narrow gallery running along each side for visitors.  In one of these, by the rail, I sat down suffocated, bewildered, and deafened.  And my first impression out of the confusion was of the bewigged speaker enthroned under the royal arms, sore put to restore order.  On the table in front of him lay the great mace of the Restoration.  Three chandeliers threw down their light upon the mob of honourable members, and I wondered what had put them into this state of uproar.

Presently, with the help of a kind stranger on my right, who was occasionally making shorthand notes, I got a few bearings.  That was the Treasury Bench, where Lord North sat (he was wide awake, now).  And there was the Government side.  He pointed out Barrington and Weymouth and Jerry Dyson and Sandwich, and Rigby in the court suit of purple velvet with the sword thrust through the pocket.  I took them all in, as some of the worst enemies my country had in Britain.  Then my informant seemed to hesitate, and made bold to ask my persuasion.  When I told him I was a Whig, and an American, he begged the favour of my hand.

“There, sir,” he cried excitedly, “that stout young gentleman with the black face and eyebrows, and the blacker heart, I may say,—­the one dressed in the fantastical costume called by a French name,—­is Mr. Charles Fox.  He has been sent by the devil himself, I believe, to ruin this country.  ’Ods, sir, that devil Lord Holland begot him.  He is but one and twenty, but his detestable arts have saved North’s neck from Burke and Wedderburn on two occasions this year.”

“And what has happened to-day?” I asked, smiling.

The stranger smiled, too.