We have said that, among those who were at the conference, might be observed some persons who might be recognised as part of the crew of the lugger.  Such was the case; Sir Robert Barclay and many others were men of good family, and stout Jacobites.  These young men served in the boat with the other men, who were no more than common seamen; but this was considered necessary in those times of treachery.  The lugger pulled eighteen oars, was clinker built, and very swift, even with a full cargo.  The after-oars were pulled by the adherents of Sir Robert, and the arm-chest was stowed in the stern-sheets:  so that these young men being always armed, no attempt to betray them, or to rise against them, on the part of the smugglers, had they been so inclined, could have succeeded.  Ramsay’s trust as steersman had been appropriated to Jemmy Salisbury, but no other alteration had taken place.  We have entered into this detail to prove the activity of the Jacobite party.  About an hour after the conference, Sir Robert and his cavaliers had resumed their seamen’s attire, for they were to go over that night; and two hours before dusk, those who had been at a conference, in which the fate of kingdoms and crowned heads was at stake, were to be seen labouring at the oar, in company with common seamen, and urging the fast boat through the yielding waters, towards her haven at the cove.

Chapter XXXIV

Besides other Matter, containing an Argument.

We left Ramsay domiciliated in the house of the syndic Van Krause, on excellent terms with his host, who looked upon him as the mirror of information, and not a little in the good graces of the syndic’s daughter, Wilhelmina.  There could not be a more favourable opportunity, perhaps, for a handsome and well-informed young man to prosecute his addresses and to gain the affections of the latter, were he so inclined.  Wilhelmina had been brought up in every luxury, but isolated from the world.  She was now just at the age at which it was her father’s intention to introduce her; but romantic in her disposition, she cared little for the formal introduction which it was intended should take place.  Neither had she seen, in any of the young Dutch aristocracy, most of whom were well known to her by sight, as pointed out to her by her father when riding with him, that form and personal appearance which her mind’s eye had embodied in her visions of her future lover.  Her mind was naturally refined, and she looked for that elegance and grace of deportment which she sought for in vain among her countrymen, but which had suddenly been presented to her in the person of Edward Ramsay.