a certainty that, in case the Lords and Commons should vote its adoption, the King will yield to the manifest will of England, Charles exclaims :—

'He is my friend! I might consent to this if I had not wronged him already! We forget that he

has a wife and children.

Why, this would be signing

the warrant for his death! I will take the advice of Indeed, I never meant that Strafford

the Commons.

should serve me any more.

But this Bill is unworthy

of you, sir! Prevent it, and I will forget that you ever mentioned it to me. Are you satisfied ?'

'Listen to me, sir,' answers Pym. 'Eliot once laid his white, wasted hand on my forehead. Wentworth has talked whole nights with me. Hampden loves me. How can I breathe and not wish well to England and to her King?'

'I thank you, sir. You will let that King keep his servant. Thanks!'

'Let me speak! I may not speak again. My spirit yearns for a cool night after this weary day. I would not have my soul grow yet more sick in a new task, even more solemn than this, and more full of the utmost weal or woe to England. I thought that if I found myself alone with you after this trial, I might say something to you as man to man that would warn you and save you. Mark me, King Charles! Save you, not Strafford! But it is God that must do that. Yet I warn you, with Strafford's

faded eyes still gazing at me, if you would not have it asked, "How long must the many endure the rule of one ?" promise me that, if England consents to Strafford's death, you will not interfere. Otherwise

'God has forsaken me! I am in a net and cannot It shall all be as you say.'

move.

Scarcely has he consented, when Lady Carlisle rushes in, to tell him how beautiful with joy her friend looks at hearing he is not deserted by his master, and how generously he refuses to take any help that might endanger his king, but she sees Charles' white face. and the fatal parchment.

Pym departs, saying to himself, 'No drawing back! England has spoken to my soul! The end is very near!'

Then Lucy Carlisle exclaims, 'I am to save him! All else have shrunk away; I alone am left. Heaven will make my hand strong now as well as my heart. After that, let me die.'

Accordingly, she persuades Strafford's fellowsoldiers to follow her to the Tower, in force enough to compel the lukewarm governor to permit them to place the Earl on board a ship which will carry him to France. Hollis, whom she bids inform the King of her plan as soon as it succeeds, and whom she charges never to let his brother-in-law know that it was not Charles that saved him, warns her that it is

vain to hope of outwitting Pym, and asks her what reward she hopes to have for exposing herself, so young and fragile, alone among rude mercenaries.

'Don't you think I may go to France with him ?' she answers. 'And you will reward me, for you have lived with him from his youth, and known him before affairs of state bent down his noble brow. I have learned something of his later life, and I shall know all his future; but you will help me make his youth my own also. You will tell me all when he is saved.'

'My gentle friend, he should know it all and love you.'

'Love me? No! Too late for that! Let him love the King. I have your word for keeping up the old delusion and making it seem all his scheme. Now to my gallant friends!'

That evening Strafford sits in the Tower with his children, and hears them sing :-

'O bell' andare

Per barca in mare,

Verso la sera

Di Primavera!'

This, he tells his son William, is a song for Venice, whose islets the mainland is hardly willing to let go. Then, as the boy says he shall go there some day, he bids him see many lands, and England last of all, for that is the way to love her best. The child asks why

it is, then, that men say he sought to ruin her; and the little girl complains of the songs about him she hears sung in the street.

'Well, this has been the fate of better men,' muses the father. 'But will not Time, who comes in the twilight to mend all the caprices of the fantastic day, will not he do me right? Something has been done for Ireland; too little, but enough to show what might have been. The songs will say that I forsook the people. Nothing more? No doubt but Fame, that busy scribe, will turn a deaf ear to her thousand slaves, who are noisy to be enrolled, and pause to register some ingenious commentary on such plain inscriptions as the patriot Pym, and the apostate Strafford !'

Hollis now enters with a companion, who, he says, must be present, and who, Strafford supposes, is one of the jailors. The Earl is eager to talk about the quiet life he expects to lead after his release, sitting under a quince-tree beside the fish-pond at his countryseat, and now and then venturing up to London to hear the news, and be himself appealed to in some tavern, to tell whether the fallen minister's first name was James or John. He has no curiosity to hear his brother-in-law's news, which, he thinks, is merely an explanation of the King's not having come in person to set him free. At last he sends the children away, saying he is determined to keep them loyal, and then,

after blaming Charles for making him go forth like a runaway, instead of leading him out by the hand in public, he calls for the order of release.

'Spare me!' answers Hollis.

'Why, he would not have me steal away in an old doublet and a steeple hat, like Prynne's, or be smuggled into France? I must think of my children. It was for their sake I was so patient on my trial, and did not give back the lie to any of your Puritans. Why should I make my boy prove son to a prisonbreaker? I shall stay here! The King should know this. He has children, too. You, sir, feel for me, I see,' he says to the attendant. 'You need not hide your face. It may have looked on me from the judg

ment-seat-I am sure I have seen it somewhere-but I thank you for coming, for there is one who does not come.'

'Forgive him, as a man should, who is about to die,' urges Hollis.

'True! We must all die, and we all need forgiveness! I forgive him with my whole soul.'

6

Strafford, you are about to die !'

'Sir, if you have come to set me free, this jest is heartless and does harm. Ha! You are weeping ! Let me end this. See this paper, warm with lying next my heart. The King's promise: "Strafford shall take no hurt in person, honour, or estate."