could be
nothing more in the presence of the great dread which loomed larger
upon him after every conversation with the lawyer.

For Mr. Donkin had been right in his prognostication. Government took
up the attack on the Rendezvous with a high and heavy hand. It was
necessary to assert authority which had been of late too often
braved. An example must be made, to strike dismay into those who
opposed and defied the press-gang; and all the minor authorities who
held their powers from Government were in a similar manner severe
and relentless in the execution of their duty. So the attorney, who
went over to see the prisoner in York Castle, told Philip. He added
that Daniel still retained his pride in his achievement, and could
not be brought to understand the dangerous position in which he was
placed; that when pressed and questioned as to circumstances that
might possibly be used in his defence, he always wandered off to
accounts of previous outrages committed by the press-gang, or to
passionate abuse of the trick by which men had been lured from their
homes on the night in question to assist in putting out an imaginary
fire, and then seized and carried off. Some of this very natural
indignation might possibly have some effect on the jury; and this
seemed the only ground of hope, and was indeed a slight one, as the
judge was likely to warn the jury against allowing their natural
sympathy in such a case to divert their minds from the real
question.

Such was the substance of what Philip heard, and heard repeatedly,
during his many visits to Mr. Dawson. And now the time of trial drew
near; for the York assizes opened on March the twelfth; not much
above three weeks since the offence was committed which took Daniel
from his home and placed him in peril of death.

Philip was glad that, the extremity of his danger never having been
hinted to Bell, and travelling some forty miles being a most unusual
exertion at that time to persons of her class, the idea of going to
see her husband at York had never suggested itself to Bell's mind.
Her increasing feebleness made this seem a step only to be taken in
case of the fatal extreme necessity; such was the conclusion that
both Sylvia and he had come to; and it was the knowledge of this
that made Sylvia strangle her own daily longing to see her father.
Not but that her hopes were stronger than her fears. Philip never
told her the causes for despondency; she was young, and she, like
h