At the Stairs where we had taken him abroad, and ever since, I had
looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had seen
none. We certainly had not been, and at that time as certainly we
were not either attended or followed by any boat. If we had been
waited on by any boat, I should have run in to shore, and have
obliged her to go on, or to make her purpose evident. But we held
our own without any appearance of molestation.
He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a natural
part of the scene. It was remarkable (but perhaps the wretched life
he had led accounted for it) that he was the least anxious of any
of us. He was not indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live
to see his gentleman one of the best of gentlemen in a foreign
country; he was not disposed to be passive or resigned, as I
understood it; but he had no notion of meeting danger half way.
When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come before he
troubled himself.
"If you knowed, dear boy," he said to me, "what it is to sit here
alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having been day by day
betwixt four walls, you'd envy me. But you don't know what it is."
"I think I know the delights of freedom," I answered.
"Ah," said he, shaking his head gravely.
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