which certainly contained fatal matter to both
him and the Queen.

They had no doubt been called forth with that intent, and a doubt had
begun to arise in the victim's mind whether the last reply had been
really the Queen's own. It had been delivered to him in the street,
not by the usual channel, but by a blue-coated serving-man. Two or
three days later Humfrey had told him of Langston's interview with
Walsingham, which he had at the time laughed to scorn, thinking himself
able to penetrate any disguise of that Proteus, and likewise believing
that he was blinding Walsingham.

He first took alarm a few days after Humfrey's departure, and wrote to
Queen Mary to warn her, convinced that the traitor must be Langston.
Ballard became himself suspected, and after lurking about in various
disguises was arrested in Babington's own lodgings. To disarm
suspicion, Antony went to Walsingham to talk about the French Mission,
and tried to resume his usual habits, but in a tavern, he became aware
that Langston, under some fresh shape, was watching him, and hastily
throwing down the reckoning, he fled without his cloak or sword to
Gage's house at Westminster, where he took horse, hid himself in St.
John's Wood, and finally was taken, half starved, in an outhouse at
Harrow, belonging to a farmer, whose mercy involved him in the like
doom.

This was the substance of the story told by the unfortunate young man
to Richard Talbot, whom he owned as the best and wisest friend he had
ever had--going back to the warnings twice given, that no cause is
served by departing from the right; no kingdom safely won by
worshipping the devil: "And sure I did worship him when I let myself be
led by Gifford," he said.

His chief anxiety was not for his wife and her child, who he said would
be well taken care of by the Ratcliffe family, and who, alas! had never
won his heart. In fact he was relieved that he was not permitted to
see the young thing, even had she wished it; it could do no good to
either of them, though he had written a letter, which she was to
deliver, for the Queen, commending her to her Majesty's mercy.

His love had been for Cicely, and even that had never been, as Richard
saw, such purifying, restraining, self-sacrificing affection as was
Humfrey's. It was half romance, half a sort of offshoot from his one
great and absorbing passion of devotion to the Queen of Scots, which
was still as strong as ever. He entrusted Richard wit