east
suspicious man I had ever encountered; but once his suspicion was awake
there was none harder to persuade. So he had been with His Grace of
Monmouth on two or three occasions; so, it appeared, he was to be with
me now.

"Sir," said Mr. Chiffinch again, "I have examined Mr. Mallock very
closely: but I have told him very little. Will Your Majesty allow him
to hear what the case is against him?"

The King, who was frowning and pursing his lips, raised his eyes; and
immediately I dropped my own. He was in a black mood indeed, and all the
blacker for his past kindness to me.

"Tell him, Hoskyns," he said; and then, before the Colonel could speak
he addressed me directly.

"Mr. Mallock," he said sharply, "I will tell you plainly why I have you
here, and why you are not in ward. You have been of service to me; I do
not deny that. And I have never known you yet to betray your trust.
Well, then, I do not wish to disgrace you publicly without allowing you
an opportunity of speaking and clearing yourself if that is possible. I
tell you frankly, I do not think you will. I see no loophole anywhere.
But--well there it is. Tell him, Hoskyns."

I will not deny that I was terrified. This was so wholly unlike all I
had ever known of His Majesty. What in the world could be the case
against me? (For I now saw that Mr. Chiffinch had not told me the whole,
but only a part of the charge.) I fixed my eyes upon Mr. Hoskyns for
whom I had conceived, so soon as I had set eyes on him, an extreme
repulsion.

He made a kind of apologetic cringing movement towards the papers. The
King made no movement, but rested heavily in his chair, with his hat
forward, his elbows on the arms of his chair and his fingers knit
beneath his chin. The Colonel took the papers up, shuffled them for a
minute, and then began. There was an extraordinary malice in his manner
which I could not understand.

"The charge against the--the gentleman--whose name, I understand, is
Roger Mallock, consists of two distinct points:

"The first is that he has received and concealed a paper, containing an
account of a debate held between certain of His Majesty's enemies, five
years ago, in November of sixteen hundred and seventy-nine, with the
list of the persons present and the votes that they gave as regards
compassing the King's death. The first point to which Mr. Mallock has to
answer is, How he came to be in possession of this paper at all?"

I made a movement to sp