ates were barred, as usual?"

"Yes," I said. "And the guard fetched a lieutenant before he would let
me in."

(For ever since the late alarms extraordinary precautions had been taken
in keeping the great gates of the Palace always guarded.)

"And you saw no one after you?"

"No one," I said.

"Well," said Mr. Chiffinch, "a fellow was after you. For when you were
gone in he came up to the guard and asked who you were, and by what
right you had entered. The lieutenant sent a mail to tell me so, and I
met him in the passage as I went out."

"Who was the fellow?"

"Oh! a man called Dangerfield. The lieutenant very prudently detained
him; and I went across and questioned him before I went to His Majesty.
I know nothing of the man, except that he hath been convicted, for I saw
the branding in his hand when we examined him. We let him go again
immediately."

"He knows my name?"

Mr. Chiffinch smiled.

"We are not so foolish as that, Mr. Mallock. He thinks you have some
place at Court; but we did not satisfy him as to your name."

I said nothing; for there was nothing to say.

"You had best be very careful, Mr. Mallock," went on the page, standing
up again. "You have been mixing a great deal with unpopular folks. You
will be of no service to His Majesty at all if you fall under suspicion.
You had best go back by water to the Temple Stairs."

He spoke a little coldly; and I perceived that he thought I had been
indiscreet.

"Well," he said, "we had best be going to His Majesty's lodgings."

I had flattered myself, up to the present, that I knew His Majesty's
capacities tolerably well. I thought him to be an easily read man, with
both virtues and vices uppermost, wearing his heart on his sleeve, as
the saying is--indolent, witty, lacking all self-control--yet not, as I
might say, a deep man. I was to learn the truth, or rather begin to
learn it, on this very night.

* * * * *

When I entered his private closet he was sitting not where I had seen
him before, but at the great table in the midst of the floor, with his
papers about him, and an appearance of great industry. He did not do
more than look up for an instant, and then down again; and I stood
there before him, after I had bowed and been taken no notice of, as it
were a scholar waiting to be whipped.

He was all ready for supper, in his lace, with his hat on his head; and
he was writing a letter, with a pair of candles bu