retted anything else in all my
life. I resolved that, while I should, according to my promise, help the
Scottish queen escape, I would not go with her. I resolved to wait here at
Haddon to tell all to you and to our queen, and then I would patiently
take my just punishment from each. My doom from the queen, I believed,
would probably be death; but I feared more your--God help me! It is
useless for me to speak." Here I broke down and fell upon my knees,
crying, "Madge, Madge, pity me, pity me! Forgive me if you can, and, if
our queen decrees it, I shall die happy."

In my desperation I caught the girl's hand, but she drew it quickly from
me, and said:--

"Do not touch me!"

She arose to her feet, and groped her way to her bedroom. We were in Aunt
Dorothy's room. I watched Madge as she sought with her outstretched hand
the doorway; and when she passed slowly through it, the sun of my life
seemed to turn black. Just as Madge passed from the room, Sir William St.
Loe, with two yeomen, entered by Sir George's door and placed irons upon
my wrist and ankles. I was led by Sir William to the dungeon, and no word
was spoken by either of us.

I had never in my life feared death, and now I felt that I would welcome
it. When a man is convinced that his life is useless, through the dire
disaster that he is a fool, he values it little, and is even more than
willing to lose it.

Then there were three of us in the dungeon,--John, Lord Rutland, and
myself; and we were all there because we had meddled in the affairs of
others, and because Dorothy had inherited from Eve a capacity for insane,
unreasoning jealousy.

Lord Rutland was sitting on the ground in a corner of the dungeon. John,
by the help of a projecting stone in the masonry, had climbed to the small
grated opening which served to admit a few straggling rays of light into
the dungeon's gloom. He was gazing out upon the fair day, whose beauty he
feared would soon fade away from him forever.

Elizabeth's coldness had given him no hope. It had taken all hope from his
father.

The opening of the door attracted John's attention, and he turned his face
toward me when I entered. He had been looking toward the light, and his
eyes, unaccustomed for the moment to the darkness, failed at first to
recognize of me. When the dungeon door had closed behind me, he sprang
down from his perch by the window, and came toward me with outstretched
hands. He said sorrowfully:--

"Malcolm, h