n silence, and I should have
kicked my heels that night in Newgate, and a week or two later in the
air, on a charge of being in with the Jesuits in their plot. Yet I said
them; for I could say nothing else.

His Majesty's face turned black as thunder as I began; and when I was
done it was all stiff with pride.

"That is your mind, Mr. Mallock, then?" he said.

"That is my mind, Sir," I answered him.

And then a change went over his face once more. God knows why he
relented; I think it may have been that he had somewhat of a fancy for
me, and remembered how I had pleased him and tried to serve him. And
when he spoke, it was very gently indeed.

"Mr. Mallock," he said, "those are very brave words. But I think they
are not worthy of a man of your parts. For consider; were you not sent
here by the Holy Father to help a poor sinner who had need of it? And is
it Catholic charity to leave the sinner because of his sins?"

I said nothing to that; for I was all confounded at his mildness. I
suppose I had braced myself for something very different.

"It is true I am not a Catholic; but were you not sent here, in answer
to my entreaty, that you might help to make it easy for me to become
one? Is it apostolic, then, to run away so soon--"

"If Your Majesty," I burst out, "would but shew some signs--"

He lifted his eyebrows at that.

"Signs! In these days?" he said. "Why, I should hang, myself, in a
week's time! Are these the days, think you, to shew Catholicism? Why; do
you not think that my own heart is not near broken with all I have had
to do?"

He spoke with extraordinary passion; for that was his way when he was
very deeply moved (which, to tell the truth, however, was not very
often). But I have never known a man so careless and indolent on the
surface, who had a softer heart than His Sacred Majesty, if it could but
be touched.

"The blood of God's priests," he cried, holding the arms of his chair so
that it shook--"their blood cries from the ground against me! Do you
think I do not know that? Yet what can I do? I am tied and bound by
circumstance. I could not save them; and in the attempt I could only
lose my own life or throne as well. The people are mad for their blood!
Why Scroggs himself said in public at one of the trials, that even the
King's Mercy could not come between them and death. And it is at this
moment, then, that the servants to whom I had looked to help me, leave
me! Go if you will, Mr. Mallo