ill. Still, for good or evil, the die was cast now, and retreat was

out of the question.

We had confronted too many dangers during the last three years not to be able to face this one with a good courage; and presently Master Bertie, taking a seat, requested to be told of the strength and plans of our associates, his businesslike manner introducing at once some degree of order and method into a conference which before our arrival had--unless I was much mistaken--been conspicuously lacking in both.

"Our resources?" Penruddocke replied confidently. "They lie everywhere, man! We have but to raise the flag and the rest will be a triumphal march. The people, sick of burnings and torturings, and heated by the loss of Calais last January, will flock to us. Flock to us, do I say? I will answer for it they will!"

"But you have some engagements, some promises from people of standing?"

"Oh, yes! But the whole nation will join us. They are weary of the present state of things."

"They may be as weary of it as you say," Master Bertie answered shrewdly; "but is it equally certain that they will risk their necks to amend it? You have fixed upon some secure base from which we can act, and upon which, if necessary, we may fall back to concentrate our strength?"

"Fall back?" cried Penruddocke, rising from his seat in heat. "Master Bertie, I hope you have not come among us to talk of falling back! Let us have no talk of that. If Wyatt had held on at once London would have been his! It was falling back ruined him."

Master Bertie shook his head. "If you have no secure base, you run the risk of being crushed in the first half hour," he said. "When a fire is first lighted the breeze puts it out which afterward but fans it."

"You will not say that when you hear our plans. There are to be three risings at once. Lord Delaware will rise in the west."

"But will he?" said Master Bertie pointedly, disregarding the threatening looks which were cast at him by more than one. "The late rebellion there was put down very summarily, and I should have thought that countryside would not be prone to rise again. _Will_ Lord Delaware rise?"

"Oh, yes, he will rise fast enough!" Penruddocke replied carelessly. "I will answer for him. And on the same day, while we do the London business, Sir Richard Bray will gather his men in Kent."

"Do not count on him!" said Master Bertie. "A prisoner, muffled and hoodwinked, was taken to the Tower by water this afternoon. And rumor says it was Sir Richard Bray."

There was a pause of consternation, during which one looked at another, and swarthy faces grew pale. Penruddocke was the first to recover himself. "Bah!" he exclaimed, "a fig for rumor! She is ever a lying jade! I will bet a noble Richard Bray is supping in his own house at this minute."

"Then you would lose," Master Bertie rejoined sadly, and with no show of triumph. "On hearing the report I sent a messenger to Sir Richard's house. He brought word back that Sir Richard Bray had been fetched away unexpectedly by four men, and that the house was in confusion."

A murmur of dismay broke out at the lower end of the table. But the Cornishman rose to the situation. "What matter?" he cried boisterously. "What we have lost in Bray we have gained in Master Bertie. He will raise Lincolnshire for us, and the Duchess's tenants. There should be five hundred stout men of the latter, and two-thirds of them Protestants at heart. If Bray has been seized there is the more call for haste that we may release him."

This appeal was answered by an outburst of cries. One or two even rose, and waving their weapons swore a speedy vengeance. But Master Bertie sat silent until the noise had subsided. Then he spoke. "You must not count on them either, Sir Thomas," he said firmly. "I cannot find it in my conscience to bring my wife's tenants into a plan so desperate as this appears to be. To appeal to the people generally is one thing; to call on those who are bound to us and who cannot in honor refuse is another. And I will not risk in a hopeless struggle the lives of men whose fathers looked for guidance to me and mine."

A silence, the silence of utter astonishment, fell upon the plotters round the table. In every face--and they were all turned upon my companion--I read rage and distrust and dismay. They had chafed under his cold criticisms and his calm reasonings. But this went beyond all, and there were hands which stole instinctively to daggers, and eyes which waited scowling for a signal. But Penruddocke, sanguine by nature and rendered reckless by circumstances, had still the feelings of a gentleman, and something in him responded to the appeal which underlay Master Bertie's words. He remained silent, gazing gloomily at the table, his eyes perhaps opened at this late hour to the hopelessness of the attempt he meditated.

It was Walter Kingston who came to the fore, and put into words the thoughts of the coarser and more selfish spirits round him. Leaping from his seat he dashed his slender hand on the table. "What does this mean?" he sneered, a dangerous light in his dark eyes. "Those only are here or should be here who are willing to stake all--all, mind you--on the cause. Let us have no sneaks! Let us have no men with a foot on either bank! Let us have no Courtenays nor cowards! Such men ruined Wyatt and hanged my brother! A curse on them!" he cried, his voice rising almost to a scream.

"Master Kingston! do you refer to me?" Bertie rejoined in haughty surprise.

"Ay, I do!" cried the young man hotly.

"Then I must beg leave of these gentlemen to explain my position."

"Your position? So! More words?" quoth the other mockingly.

"Ay! as many words as I please," retorted Master Bertie, his color rising. "Afterward I will be as ready with deeds, I dare swear, as any other! My tenants and my wife's I will not draw into an almost hopeless struggle. But my own life and my friend's, since we have obtained your secrets, I must risk, and I will do so in honor to the death. For the rest, who doubts my courage may test it below ground or above."

The young man laughed rudely. "You will risk your life, but not your lands, Master Bertie? That is the position, is it?"

My companion was about to utter a rejoinder, fierce for him, when I, who had hitherto sat silent, interposed. "The old witch told the truth," I cried bitterly. "She said if we came hither we should perish. And perish we shall, through being linked to a dozen men as brave as I could wish, but the biggest fools under heaven!"

"Fools?" shouted Kingston.

"Ay, fools!" I repeated. "For who but fools, being at sea in a boat in which all must sink or swim, would fall a-quarreling? Tell me that!" I cried, slapping the table.

"You are about right," Penruddocke said, and half a dozen voices muttered assent.

"About right, is he?" shrieked Kingston. "But who knows we are in a boat together? Who knows that, I'd like to hear?"

"I do!" I said, standing up and overtopping him by eight inches. "And if any man hints that Master Bertie is here for any other purpose or with any other intent than to honestly risk his life in this endeavor as becomes a gentleman, let him stand out--let him stand out, and I will break his neck! Fie, gentlemen, fie!" I continued, after a short pause, which I did not make too long lest Master Kingston's passion should get the better of his prudence. "Though I am young I have seen service. But I never saw battle won yet with dissension in the camp. For shame! Let us to business, and make the best dispositions we may."

"You talk sense, Master Carey!" Penruddocke cried, with a great oath. "Give me your hand. And do you, Kingston, hold your peace. If Master Bertie will not raise his men to save his own skin, he will hardly do it for ours. Now, Sir Richard Bray being taken, what is to be done, my lads? Come, let us look to that."

So the storm blew over. But it was with heavy hearts that two of us fell to the discussion which followed, counting over weapons and assigning posts, and debating this one's fidelity and that one's lukewarmness. Our first impressions had not deceived us. The plot was desperate, and those engaged in it were wanting in every element which should command success--in information, forethought, arrangement--everything save sheer audacity. When after a prolonged and miserable sitting it was proposed that all should take the oath of association on the Gospels, Master Bertie and I assented gloomily. It would make our position no worse, for already we were fully committed. The position was indeed bad enough. We had only persuaded the others to a short delay; and even this meant that we must remain in hiding in England, exposed from day to day to all the chances of detection and treachery.

Sir Thomas brought out from some secret place about him a tiny roll of paper wrapped in a quill, and while we stood about him looking over his shoulders, he laboriously added, letter by letter, three or four names. The stern, anxious faces which peered the while at the document or scanned each other only to find their anxiety reflected, the flaring lights behind us, the recklessness of some and the distrust of others, the cloaks in which many were wrapped to the chin, and the occasional gleam of hidden weapons, made up a scene very striking. The more as it was no mere show, but some of us saw only too distinctly behind it the figure of the headsman and the block.

"Now," said Penruddocke, who himself I think took a certain grim pleasure in the formality, "be ready to swear, gentlemen, in pairs, as I call the names. Kingston and Matthewson!"

Lolling against the wall under one of the sconces I looked at Master Bertie, expecting to be called up with him. He smiled as our eyes met; and I thought with a rush of tenderness how lightly I could have dared the worst had all my associates been like him. But repining came too late, and in a moment Penruddocke surprised me by calling out "Crewdson and Carey!"

So Master Bertie was not to be my companion! I learned afterward that men who were strangers to one another were purposely associated, the theory being that each should keep an eye upon his oath-fellow. I went forward to the end of the table, and took the book.

There was a slight pause.

"Crewdson!" called Penruddocke sharply; "did you not hear, man?"

There was a little stir at the farther end of the room, and he came forward, moving slowly and reluctantly. I saw that he was the man whom Penruddocke had called back when we entered, a man of great height, though slender, and closely cloaked. A drooping gray mustache covered his mouth, and that was almost all I made out before Sir Thomas, with some sharpness, bade him uncover. He did so with an abrupt gesture, and reaching out his hand grasped the other end of the book as though he would take it from me. His manner was so strange that I looked hard at him, and he, jerking up his head with a gesture of defiance, looked at me too, his face very pale.

I heard Penruddocke's voice droning the words of the oath, but I paid no attention to them--I was busied with something else. Where had I seen the sinister gleam in those eyes before, and that forehead high and narrow, and those lean, swarthy cheeks? Where had I before confronted that very face which now glared into mine across the book? Its look was bold and defiant, but low down in the cheek I saw a little pulse beating furiously, a pulse which told of anxiety, and the jaws, half veiled by the ragged mustache, were set in an iron grip. Where? Ha! I knew. I dropped my end of the book and stepped back.

"Look to the door!" I cried, my voice sounding harsh and strange in my own ears. "Let no one leave! I denounce that man!" And raising my hand I pointed pitilessly at my oath-fellow. "I denounce him--he is a spy and traitor!"

"I a spy?" the man shouted fiercely--with the fierceness of despair.

"Ay, you! you! Clarence, or Crewdson, or whatever you call yourself, I denounce you! My time has come!"