at her
eating, bathing and dressing were but an excuse for a breathing spell
before the dreaded interview.

This fear remained with me all the time I was away, but when I
reasoned with myself I would smother it as well as I could with
argumentative attempts at self-assurance. I would say over and over to
myself that Mary could not fail, and that even if she did, there was
Jane, dear, sweet, thoughtful, unselfish Jane, who would not allow her
to do so. But as far as they go, our intuitions--our "feelings," as we
call them--are worth all the logic in the world, and you may say what
you will, but my presentiments--I speak for no one else--are well to
be minded. There is another sense hidden about us that will develop as
the race grows older. I speak to posterity.

In proof of this statement, I now tell you that when I returned to
London I found Brandon still in the terrible dungeon; and, worse
still, he had been tried for murder, and had been condemned to be
hanged, drawn and quartered on the second Friday following. Hanged!
Drawn! Quartered! It is time we were doing away with such barbarity.

We will now go back a month for the purpose of looking up the doings
of a friend of ours, his grace, the Duke of Buckingham.

On the morning after the fatal battle of Billingsgate, the barber who
had treated Brandon's wounds had been called to London to dress a
bruised knee for his grace, the duke. In the course of the operation,
an immense deal of information oozed out of the barber, one item of
which was that he had the night before dressed nine wounds, great and
small, for Master Brandon, the king's friend. This established the
identity of the man who had rescued the girls, a fact of which
Buckingham had had his suspicions all along. So Brandon's arrest
followed, as I have already related to you.

I afterward learned from various sources how this nobleman began to
avenge his mishap with Brandon at Mary's ball when the latter broke
his sword point. First, he went to Newgate and gave orders to the
keeper, who was his tool, to allow no communication with the prisoner,
and it was by his instructions that Brandon had been confined in the
worst dungeon in London. Then he went down to Greenwich to take care
of matters there, knowing that the king would learn of Brandon's
arrest and probably take steps for his liberation at once.

The king had just heard of the arrest when Buckingham arrived, and the
latter found he was right in hi