Shrewsbury by Stanley J. Weyman

Alas, the secret subjection into which I fell from that day onwards, to a man who knew neither pity nor scruple -- and wielded his power with the greater enjoyment and the less remorse for the piquant contrast it afforded to his position, as a proscribed and hunted traitor, in hiding for his life -- exceeded all the anticipations of it which I had entertained. Having his favourite lodging in the rooms opposite mine, he was ready, when the cruel humour seized him, to sally forth and mock and torment me; while the privacy of his movements and the number of his disguises (whence it arose that I never knew until I saw him whether he was there or not) kept me in a state of suspense and misery well nigh intolerable. Yet such was the spell of fear under which he had contrived to lay me -- he being a violent and dangerous man and I no soldier -- and so crafty were the means, no less than the art, by which he gradually wound a chain about me, that in spite of my hatred I found resistance vain; and for a long time, and until a _deus ex machina_, as the ancients say, appeared on the scene, saw no resource but to bear the yoke and do his bidding.

He had one principal mode of strengthening his hold upon me; which stood the higher in his favour, as besides effecting that object and rendering me serviceable, it amused him with the spectacle of my alarms. This consisted in the employing me in his treasonable designs: as by sending me with letters and messages to Sam's Coffeehouse, or to the Dog in Drury Lane, or to more private places where the Jacobites congregated; by making me a go-between to arrange meetings with those of his kidney who dared not stir abroad in daylight, and came and went between London and the coast of France under cover of night; or lastly, by using me to drop treasonable papers in the streets, or fetch the same from the secret press, in a court off St. James's, where they were printed.