Few men are condemned to such an ordeal as that through which I had passed; and though some who read this, and are as remote from death as the wife, that may be any day, and must be one day, is from the young bachelor--though some, I say, and in particular those who never saw blade drawn in anger in their lives, but have done all their fighting in the cock-pit, may think that I carried it poorly in the circumstances, and with none of the front and bravado suitable to the occasion, I would have them remember the old saying, Ne sutor supra crepidam, and ask of a scholar only a scholar's work. I would have them remember that in the shadow of the scaffold, even a man so gallant by repute as the Lord Preston of that day, stooped to be an evidence; and that in the same situation the family pride of Richard Hampden availed as little as the reckless courage of Monmouth, or the effrontery of Sir John Fenwick, to raise its owner above the common level.

Simpliciter, it is one thing to vapour at the Cocoa-tree among wits and beaux, and another to take the hazard when the time comes, as no less a person than my Lord Bolingbroke discovered, and that no farther back than '14. I would have large talkers to remember this. For myself I am content that I came through the trial with my life; and yet, not with so much of that either, that anything surer than instinct guided my steps when all was over to the Duke's home in St. James's Square, where arriving, speechless and helpless, it was wonderful I was not put to the door without more. Fortunately, my lord, marvelling at my failure to return before, and mindful, even in the turmoil of that evening, of the service I had done him in the day, had given orders in my behalf; and on my arrival I was recognised, half dead as I was, and taken to the steward's room, and being let blood by a surgeon who was hastily called in, was put to bed, all who saw me supposing that I was suffering from vertigo, or some injury, though no marks of blows on the head could be discovered.

That was a night long remembered in London. Messengers with lights, attended by files of soldiers, were every hour passing through the streets, searching houses and arresting the suspected. From mouth to mouth rumours of the conspiracy flew abroad; at nine o'clock it was stated, and generally believed, that the King was wounded; at ten that he had been seized; later that he was dead. Early in the evening the draw-bridge at the Tower was drawn, and the sentries were doubled; the City gates were closed and guarded; a whole battalion stood all night under arms at Kensington; the Council was in perpetual sitting; many houses were lighted from eve to dawn; nor since the great panic of Beachy Head in '90 had there been an alarm so deep or widespread.

If this was so in the city generally, at the Secretary's residence, whither many of the prisoners were brought for examination as soon as they were taken, the excitement was at its height. The Square outside, then unenclosed, was occupied all night by successive groups of sight-seers, or of persons more nearly interested in the event. One consequence of this was that, with all this astir without, my case attracted the less notice within; and, unheeded and almost forgotten--which, perhaps, was the better for me--I was left in peace to sleep off the shock and fright I had experienced, of which the severity may be gauged by the fact that the afternoon of the next day was well advanced before I awoke, and finding myself in bed in a strange room, with cold broth and a little wine standing on a stool at my elbow, sat up, and looked round me in amazement. The steep slope of the ceiling towards the window, and the heavy flattened eaves which projected over the latter, soon apprised me that I lay under the leads of a great house; but this was the extent of my knowledge. However, my stomach presently called for food, and I took it; and my head ceasing to swim, I began to recall what had happened to me; and rising, and going to the window, I recognised the great and fashionable Square on which my window looked. At that and the thoughts of what I had gone through, and the danger I had escaped, I fell to quaking again, and for a moment the dizziness returned. But presently, the cheerful aspect of the room much aiding me, I recovered myself, and dressing, and finishing the food, I prepared to descend.

No need to say that I wondered much at all I saw, and particularly at the handsome and stately proportions of the staircase, which I descended without seeing any person until I reached the landing on the first floor. Here, looking timidly over the balustrade, I discovered that the buzz and hum of voices which I had heard as soon as I opened my door, came from the hall below, which appeared to be paved with heads. First and nearest to where I stood were clustered on the lower steps of the staircase a number of persons whom I took to be servants, and who, standing as if in the boxes of a theatre, were taken up with staring at what went on on the floor below them, and particularly at a row of eight or nine men, who seated on chairs along one side of the hall, seemed to be in the charge of a messenger and some tipstaves, and to be prisoners awaiting examination. Between these last and the stairs occupying the floor of the hall, and both moving and standing still, were a crowd of persons of condition, the greater part, to all appearance, clients of the Duke, or officers and persons who, having the entrÉe, had stepped in out of curiosity to see the sight.

However, I had no eyes for these, for with a beating heart I recognised among the dejected prisoners seated along the wall, four whom I knew. King, Keyes, Cassel, and Ferguson himself, and I had anything but a mind to stay to be recognised in my turn. I was in the act of withdrawing, therefore, as quietly as I could, when I saw with a kind of shock that the prisoner at the end of the row, the one nearest to me and farthest from the door, was a girl. It scarcely needed a second glance to tell me that the girl was Mary. The light at that inner extremity of the hall was waning, and her face, always pale and now in shadow, wore an aspect of grey and weary depression that, natural as it was under the circumstances, went to my heart, and impressed me deeply in proportion as I had always found her hard and self-reliant. But moved as I was, I dared not linger, since to linger might be to be observed. With a light foot, therefore, I carried out my first intention, and drawing back undiscovered, sneaked up the staircase to my room.

My clue in the circumstances was clear. Plainly it was to lie close and keep quiet and shun observation until the crisis was passed; then by every means in my power--saving always the becoming an evidence in court, which was too dangerous--to deserve the Duke's favour; and as to the pledge I had given to Smith, to be guided by the future.

Such a line of conduct was immensely favoured by the illness to which I had so fortunately succumbed. Once back in my bed, I had only to lie there, and affect weakness; and in a day or two I might hope that things would be so far advanced that my share in them and knowledge of them would go for little, and I, on the ground of the personal service I had done his Grace, might keep his favour--yet run no risk.

In fact nothing could seem more simple than such a line of conduct; on which, the western daylight that still lingered in the room, giving my retreat a most cheerful aspect, I felt that I had every reason to hug myself. After the miseries and dangers of the past week I was indeed well off. Here, in the remote top floor of my lord's great house in the Square, I was as safe as I could be anywhere in the world, and I knew it.

But so contrary is human nature, and so little subject to the dictations of the soundest sense, that I had not lain in my bed five minutes, congratulating myself on my safety, before the girl, and the wretchedness I had read in her face, began to trouble me. It was not to be denied that she had gone some way towards saving my life--if she had not actually saved it; and I had a kind of feeling for her on that account. True, things were greatly altered since we had agreed to go to Romford together, et nuptias facere; I had got no patron then, nor such prospects as I now had, these troubles once overpast. But for all that, it troubled me to think of her as I had seen her, pale and downcast; and by-and-by I found myself again at the door of my room with my hand on the latch. Thence I went back, shivering and ashamed, and calling myself and doubtless rightly a fool; and tried, by watching the crowd in the Square--but timidly, since even at that height I fancied I might be recognised--to divert my thoughts. With so little success in the end, however, that presently I was stealing down the stairs again.

I knew that it was impossible I could pass down the main staircase and through the servants unobserved, but I took it that in such a house there must be a backstairs; and coming to the first floor I turned craftily down the main corridor leading into the heart of the house, and pretty quickly found that staircase--which was as good as dark-- and crept down it still meeting no one; a thing that surprised me until I stood in the long passage on the ground floor corresponding with the corridor above, and found that the door, which from its position should cut it off from the front hall, was fastened. Tantalised by the murmur of voices in the hall, and my proximity, I tried the lock twice; but the second effort only confirming the result of the first, I was letting down the latch as softly as I could, hoping that I should not be detected, when the door was sharply flung open in my face, all the noise and heat of the hall burst on me, and in the opening appeared a stout angry man, who glared at me as if he would eat me.

"What are you doing here?" he cried, "when twice I have told you----" There he stopped, seeing who it was, and "Hallo!" he continued in a different and more civil tone, "it is you, is it? Are you better?"

Afterwards I learned that he was Mr. Martin, my lord's house-steward, but at the time I knew him only for someone in authority; and I muttered an excuse. "Well, come through, now you are here," he continued sharply. "But the orders are strict that this door be kept locked while this business is going. You can see as well, or better, from the stairs. There, those are the men. And a rare set of Frenchified devils they look! Charnock is in with my lord now, and I hope he may not blow him up with gunpowder or some fiendish trick."

He had scarcely told me when, a stir in the body of the hall announcing a new arrival, a cry was raised of "Room for my Lord Marlborough and my Lord Godolphin!" and the press falling to either side out of respect, I had a glimpse of two gentlemen in the act of entering; one, a stout and very noble-looking man of florid complexion, the other stout also and personable, but a trifle smug and solemn. The steward had no sooner heard their names announced, than in a great fluster he bade me keep the door a minute; and pushing himself into the throng, he went with immense importance to receive them.

So by a strange piece of luck at the moment that the check of his presence was withdrawn, I found myself standing within three feet of the girl, whose seat was close to the door; moreover, the movement, by thrusting those who had before occupied the floor back upon the line of prisoners, had walled us in, as it were, from observation. Under these circumstances our eyes met, and I looked for a flush of joy and surprise, a cry of recognition at least; but though Mary started, and for an instant stared at me wide-eyed, her gaze fell the next moment, and muttering something inaudible, she let her chin sink back on her breast.

I did not remember that she, supposing I had informed, and ignorant of the scene which had bound me to the Duke of Shrewsbury, would see nothing surprising in my presence in his house, and more deeply wounded than I can now believe possible by her demeanour, I bent over her.

"Don't you know me?" I whispered. "Mary!"

She shivered, but retained the same attitude, her eyes on the floor.

"Can I do anything for you?" I persisted; but this time I spoke more coldly; her silence began to annoy me.

She looked up then with a wan smile; and, with lips so dry that they scarcely performed their office, spoke. "You can let me escape," she said.

"That is impossible," I answered promptly--to put an end to such notions. And then to comfort her, "Besides, what can they do to you!" I said confidently. "Nothing! You are not a man, and they do not burn women for treason now, unless it is for coining. Cheer up! They----"

"They will send me to the Compter--and whip me," she muttered, shuddering so suddenly and violently that the chair creaked under her. And then, "If you can get me away," she continued, moistening her lips and speaking with her eyes averted, "Well! But if not you had better leave me. You do me no good," she added, after a slight pause, and with a sob of impatience in her voice.

I knew that it was not unlikely that the House of Correction would be her fate; and that such a fate, even to a decent woman--and she was a girl!--might be less tolerable than death. And I felt something of the horror and lurking apprehension that parched her mouth and strained her eyes. The hall was growing dark round us, and the throng of persons of all sorts that filled it, poisoning the air with their breathing and the odour of their clothes, I experienced an astonishing loathing of the confinement and the place. I saw this the beginning of the dreary road which she had to travel; and my heart revolting with the pity of it, and the future of it, I fell into a passion, and did a thing I very seldom did. I swore.

And then--heaven knows how I went on to a thing so unwise and reckless, and in every way so unlike me! Certainly it was not the mere opportunity tempted me--though a chance more favourable, the general attention being completely engrossed by the two noblemen, could not have been conceived--yet it was certainly not that, I say, for I did it on the impulse of the moment, in sheer blind terror, not looking to see whether I were watched or not. Nor did it arise from any farther suggestion on the girl's part. In fact, all I remember of it is that, in a paroxysm of pity, feeling rather than seeing that the people round us completely hid us, I touched the girl's shoulder, and that she looked up with a wild look in her eyes--and that determined me. So that without thinking I unlocked the door in a trembling, fumbling sort of manner, and passed her through it, and followed her, no one except Cassel, the prisoner who sat next her, being the wiser. Had I been prudent, or acted under anything but the impulse of the moment, I should have let her go through, and trusting to her woman's wits to get her clear of the house, have remained on guard myself as if nothing had happened; and certainly this would have been the safer way, since I could have sworn, when I was challenged, that no one had passed through the door. But I had not the nerve to think of this or remain, and I went with her.

The thing once done, my first thought, and the natural, if foolish, impulse on which I acted was to take her to my room, hers to follow where I led. The passage beyond the door was dark, but taking no thought of slip or stumble, in a moment I had her up the small staircase which led to the first floor, and through the door at the head of the flight into the long corridor, which, spacious, lofty, and comparatively light--in every way the strangest opposite to the crowded hall below--ran from the well of the great staircase into the depths of the house. By involving her in this upper part of the house, whence escape was impossible, and where prolonged search must inevitably discover her, I was really doing a most foolish thing. But in the event it mattered nothing, for as we reached the corridor, and paused to cast a wary glance down its length this way and that--I, for my part, shaking like an aspen, and I doubt not as white as a sheet--a single footstep rang on the marble floor that edged the matting of the passage, and the next moment the Duke himself, issuing from a doorway no more than five paces away, came plump upon us.

The surprise was so complete that we had no time to move, and we stood as if turned to stone. Yet even then, if I had retained perfect presence of mind, and bethought me that he might not know the girl, and would probably deem her one of his household--a still-room maid or a seamstress--all might have been well. For though he did, in fact, know the girl, having questioned her not half an hour before, it was on me that his eye alighted; and his first words were proof that he suspected nothing.

"Are you better?" he said, pausing with the kindness and consideration that so well became him--nay, that became no other man so well. "I am glad to see that you are about. We shall want you presently. What was it?"

And then, if I had answered him at once, I have no doubt that he would have passed on; but my teeth chattered so pitiably that I could only gape at him; and on that, seeing in a moment that something was wrong, he looked at my companion, and recognised her. I saw his eyes open wide with astonishment, and his mouth grew stern. Then, "But what--what, sir, is this?" he cried. "And what do you----"

He said no more, for as he reached that word the door beside me opened gently, and a man slid round it, looked, saw the Duke, and stood, his mouth agape, a stifled oath on his lips. It was Cassel, his hands shackled.

At this fresh appearance the Duke's astonishment may be imagined, and could scarcely be exceeded. He stared at the door as if he questioned who still remained behind it, or who might be the next to issue from it. But then, seeing, I suppose, something whimsical and bizarre in the situation--which there certainly was, though at the time I was far from discerning it--and being a man who, in all circumstances, retained a natural dignity, he smiled; and recovering himself before any one of us, took a tone between the grave and ironical. "Mr. Cassel?" he said. "Unless my eyes deceive me? The gentleman I saw a few minutes ago?"

"The same," the conspirator answered jauntily; but his anxious eyes roving beside and behind the Duke belied his tone.

"Then, perhaps," my lord answered, taking out his snuff-box, and tapping it with a good-humoured air, "you will see, sir, that your presence here needs some explanation? May I ask how you came here?"

"The devil I know or care, your Grace!" Cassel answered. "Except that I came into your house with no good-will, and if I could have found the door should not have outstayed my welcome."

"I believe it," said my lord drily, "if I believe nothing else. But you have lost the throw. And that being so, may I beg that you will descend again? I am loth to use force in my own house, Mr. Cassel, and to call the servants would prejudice your case. If you are wise, therefore, I think that you will see the wisdom of retiring quietly."

"Have no fear, I will go," the man answered with sufficient coolness. "I should not have come up, but that I saw that Square-toes there smuggle out the girl, and as no one was looking it seemed natural to follow."

"Oh!" said the Duke, flashing a glance at me that loosened my knee-joints. "He smuggled her out, did he?"

"He could not do much less," the conspirator answered. "She saved his life yesterday."

"Indeed!"

"Ay, when Ferguson would have hung him like a dog! And not far wrong either! But mum! I am talking. And save him or no, I did not think the creature had the spunk to do the thing. No, I did not."

"Ah!" said my lord, looking at him attentively.

"No, and as for the wench, your Grace----" and with the word Cassel dropped his voice, "she is no more than a child. You have enough. It is all over. SacrÉ nom de Dieu, let her go, my lord. Let the girl go."

The Duke raised his eyebrows. "I see no girl," said he, slowly. "Of whom are you talking, Mr. Cassel?"

I do not know who was more astonished at that, Cassel or I. True, the girl was gone; for a moment before, the Duke's back being half-turned, she had slipped into a doorway a couple of paces away, and there I could hear her breathing even now. But that my lord had failed to detect the movement I could no more believe than that he had failed to see the girl two minutes before, when, as clearly as I ever saw anything in my life, I had seen him examine her features.

Nevertheless, "I see no girl," he repeated coolly. "But I see you, Mr. Cassel; and as the alarm maybe given at any moment, and I do not choose to be found with you, I must beg of you to descend at once. Do you, sir," he continued, addressing me sharply, "go with him, and when you have taken him back to the hall bring me the key of the door."

"Well, I am d----d!" said Cassel.

For the first time the Duke betrayed signs of anger. "Go, sir"; he said. "And do you"--this to me--"bring me the key of that door."

Cassel turned as if to go; then with difficulty lifting his hands to his head he took off his hat. "My lord," he said, "you are well called the King of Hearts. For a Whig you are a d----d good fellow!"