coln. "Why should I, Mary? His desert
is death, and I should not know what to say in his behalf."

"But if all of us were treated according to our deserts, how few of us
would escape scathing. Only you, father; I know of no one beside."

The patriot looked down at the pale girl sitting at his feet and stroked
her hair. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she gazed at him
imploringly. He knew her secret to the uttermost now. She had told him,
all the evening of that dreadful day when London saw her throw down a
rose to her country's traitor. Still, if it were to do again, would she
not do it? Her love was stronger than her sense of shame.

Richard Lincoln sat and gazed into the fire. These were indeed
troublesome times, but a light seemed breaking just below where the
clouds lowered darkest. A week had seen a great change in public
sentiment. Debate in Parliament had been fierce and bitter. At the head
of his party he had striven to show that those who held the reins of
power abused and deceived the masses, and that true liberty lay not in
ignorant usurpation of right, but intelligent recognition of a lawfully
constituted authority which regarded all alike. At first his purpose had
been misinterpreted, but as by degrees the true significance of his
words were grasped by the popular mind, groans gave place to silence,
and sullenness to cheers. He had not hesitated to wield the axe of
reform with a yeoman's hand, and the flying chips told of the havoc he
was making among the dead wood of ignorance and craft. It was his aim to
demonstrate that a demagogue in the seat of power is no less a menace to
the happiness of the people than an aristocrat.

Yet in the face of his triumph arose the shadow of this strange,
unnatural love; for it seemed unnatural to him that his only child
should have given her heart to one whose ambition it was to destroy that
which he had helped to establish and bring back the frippery of an
unhallowed past. He had found it difficult at first to conceive it as
possible, but her confession, and more eloquently still her pallid
cheeks, left no room to question the truth of this misfortune. And
to-morrow he would be called upon to doom to the scaffold the man whose
being had become so much a part of hers as to have led her to play the
traitor also. As thus he pondered the breaking light seemed to fade from
the sky, and the clouds lowered gloomy and impenetrable.

"Father," said Mary again, "I am sure