like him altogether."

"And you say he stopped you, my lord?"

"Stopped me not two hours' ride from Padusey!" roared Lord Grimsby.
"On the darkest bit of the road, the fellow sprang from nowhere and
brandished his sword in front of my horse. And then he took my purse
and my seal and my rings. You've questioned all the guards most
carefully? They're sure that the prisoner did not leave his quarters
last night? That no one entered his room or left it?"

"Why, yes." The answer was low and deferential. "He had visitors
asking for him in plenty, some with permits and some without, but no
one saw him save the guard."

"And the guard is sure he did not leave his room?" Lord Grimsby's roar
was heard again.

"They're sure, my lord. And, in very truth, would the prisoner have
returned had he once escaped? Lord Farquhart's presence here argues
Lord Farquhart's innocence of this latest outrage."

"One can argue little of the devil's doings," raged Lord Grimsby.

"But will this not free Lord Farquhart?" asked the deferential voice.

"How can it free him, fool?" demanded the roaring voice. "How could I
prove that the fellow I met was not the devil trying to save one of
his own brood? And would there not be fools a-plenty to say that I'd
met no one, that I'd invented the tale to save myself from the devil's
clutches, if I freed Lord Farquhart on such evidence? The whole affair
from the beginning has savored of the devil's mixing. Who else would
have driven his majesty on to demand such hot haste against the
fellow? 'Tis all most uncanny and most unwholesome. I'll be thankful,
for one, when my part in it's over."

"I wonder on what we wait. 'Tis surely long after ten o'clock!"

It was Ashley's voice that made this statement loud enough for all the
room to hear, loud enough to penetrate even to Lord Grimsby's ears;
loud enough to force that timorous jurist back into a judicial calm.

It was then that Lord Farquhart's lips parted in a second smile. It
was then that some fifty hands sprang to their swords, for there were
fifty gentlemen there who resented Ashley's unseemly eagerness to
hurry on Lord Farquhart's fate.

"And 'tis like the devil, too, to make me finish his black work,"
commented Lord Grimsby's natural voice, ere his judicial voice took up
the opening formalities of the sentence he was to pronounce.

'Twas well known that the crown left naught to the court save the
announcement of the crown's decree. Thus was