Page 45 - A Jacobite Exile

"They tumbled all the other papers into a sack, that one of the constables
had brought with him. Then they searched all the other furniture, but they

evidently did not expect to find anything. Then they went back into the hall.

"'Well, gentlemen,' Sir Marmaduke said, 'have you found anything of a
terrible kind?'

"'We have found, I regret to say,' John Cockshaw said, 'the letters of which
we were in search, in your private cabinet--letters that prove, beyond all

doubt, that you are concerned in a plot similar to that discovered three years
ago, to assassinate his majesty the king.'

"Sir Marmaduke sprang to his feet.

"'You have found letters of that kind in my cabinet?' he said, in a dazed sort
of way.

"The magistrate bowed, but did not speak.

"'Then, sir,' Sir Marmaduke exclaimed, 'you have found letters that I have
never seen. You have found letters that must have been placed there by
some scoundrel, who plotted my ruin. I assert to you, on the honour of a

gentleman, that no such letters have ever met my eye, and that, if such a
proposition had been made to me, I care not by whom, I would have struck

to the ground the man who offered me such an insult.'

"'We are sorry, Sir Marmaduke Carstairs,' Mr. Peters said, 'most sorry, both

of us, that it should have fallen to our duty to take so painful a proceeding
against a neighbour; but, you see, the matter is beyond us. We have

received a sworn information that you are engaged in such a plot. We are
told that you are in the habit of locking up papers of importance in a certain
cabinet, and there we find papers of a most damnatory kind. We most

sincerely trust that you may be able to prove your innocence in the matter,
but we have nothing to do but to take you with us, as a prisoner, to

Lancaster.'