audience
at a breath; "we've done to where Monmouth's head was cut off."

This was very uncomfortable for the new master. He coloured up, as if
he had been guilty of a scandalous misdemeanour, and fumbled nervously
with the book, positively dreading to make a fresh attempt. At last,
however, he summoned up courage.

"The death of this ill-fated nobleman was followed by a still more
terrible measure of retribution against those who had--"

"Please, sir, we can't do such long words; we don't know what that
means. You've got to say it in easy words, not what's put in the book."

Jeffreys felt that all the sins of his youth were rising up against him
that moment. Nothing that he had ever done seemed just then as bad as
this latest delinquency.

"After Monmouth's death they made it very--(hot, he was going to say,
but he pulled himself up in time), they made it very (whatever was the
word?)--very awkward for those who had helped him. A cruel judge named
Jeffreys--"

That was a finishing stroke! The reader could have sunk through the
floor as he saw the sensation which this denunciation of himself caused
among his audience. There was not a shadow of doubt in the face of any
one of them as to his identity with the ferocious judge in question.
What followed he felt was being listened to as a chapter or
autobiography, and nothing he could say could now clear his character of
the awful stain that rested upon it.

"A cruel judge condemned more than three hundred persons--"

"You forgot to say his name, please, sir," they put in.

"Never mind his name; that is, I told you once, you should remember,"
stammered the hapless usher.

"I remember it. Jeffreys, wasn't it, Mr Jeffreys?" said one boy
triumphantly.

"He condemned more than--"

"Who, Jeffreys?"

What was the use of keeping it up?

"Yes; this wicked judge, Jeffreys, condemned more than three hundred
people to death, just because they had helped Monmouth."

There was a low whistle of horror, as every eye transfixed the speaker.

"Did he repent?" asked one.

"It doesn't say so," said the wretched Jeffreys, turning over to the
next page in a miserable attempt to appear as if he was not involved in
the inquiry.

"How dreadful!" said another.

"Besides this, 849 people were transported."

"By Jeffreys, sir?"

"Yes," replied the owner of the name, finally throwing off all disguise
and giving himself up to his fate, "by this wicked Jeffreys."

"