" cries he.
"I have found the key of your impudent heart. You look pale, your eyes
waver, Mr. David! You see the grave and the gallows nearer by than you
had fancied."

"I own to a natural weakness," said I. "I think no shame for that.
Shame ..." I was going on.

"Shame waits for you on the gibbet," he broke in.

"Where I shall but be even'd with my lord your father" said I.

"Aha, but not so!" he cried, "and you do not yet see to the bottom of
this business. My father suffered in a great cause, and for dealing in
the affairs of kings. You are to hang for a dirty murder about
boddle-pieces. Your personal part in it, the treacherous one of holding
the poor wretch in talk, your accomplices a pack of ragged Highland
gillies. And it can be shown, my great Mr. Balfour--it can be shown, and
it _will_ be shown, trust _me_ that has a finger in the pie--it can be
shown, and shall be shown, that you were paid to do it. I think I can
see the looks go round the Court when I adduce my evidence, and it shall
appear that you, a young man of education, let yourself be corrupted to
this shocking act for a suit of cast clothes, a bottle of Highland
spirits, and three-and-fivepence-halfpenny in copper money."

There was a touch of the truth in these words that knocked me like a blow:
clothes, a bottle of _usquebaugh_, and three-and-fivepence-halfpenny in
change, made up, indeed, the most of what Alan and I had carried from
Aucharn; and I saw that some of James's people had been blabbing in their
dungeons.

"You see I know more than you fancied," he resumed in triumph. "And as
for giving it this turn, great Mr. David, you must not suppose the
Government of Great Britain and Ireland will ever be stuck for want of
evidence. We have men here in prison who will swear out their lives as
we direct them; as I direct, if you prefer the phrase. So now you are to
guess your part of glory if you choose to die. On the one hand, life,
wine, women, and a duke to be your hand-gun: on the other, a rope to
your craig, and a gibbet to clatter your bones on, and the lousiest,
lowest story to hand down to your namesakes in the future that was ever
told about a hired assassin. And see here!" he cried, with a formidable
shrill voice, "see this paper that I pull out of my pocket. Look at the
name there: it is the name of the great David, I believe, the ink scarce
dry yet. Can you guess its nature? It is the warrant for your arrest,
which I have but to tou