CHAPTER XVII.
MORE ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS.
Concluding our compact in the quickest fashion,
I went back to the prisoner with the news. I
chose to tell him simply that he was a free man,
and at liberty to go. No more; a very exact discretion
being needed to keep the arbitrary rogue
apart from his heroic foibles. I was also careful to
announce his freedom in a tone of bald matter-of-fact,
as though the circumstance was the most natural
in the world. Yet my art was by no means equal
to the work before it, as at the first word the provoking
fellow turned a sceptic's eye upon me, and
employed his lips on a long and sustained whistle of
amused amazement.
"Zooks, madam!" says he, laughing, "you ought to succeed, you know. You possess a very considerable invention. But my soul, what a front you've got to bring me tales of this kind!"
"Cease this," says I, with an imperious gesture, "But go to your chamber at once and change your attire, whilst I indite letters commending you to the attention of some of my friends. Off now, ere the Captain repents his clemency."
