'And now,' said my visitor, 'we must look to thee.' For he perceived that his information about Sir Claudius had scarcely enlivened me. 'We must look to thee,' he repeated. 'Thou hast had it a bit rough,' he added tenderly. 'Sometimes the storm of life gathers and breaks upon one all at once--but it spends itself--it spends itself,' he faltered and almost broke down, because for the first time I looked up and he saw my eyes, 'and then, for all the future,' he continued hurriedly, 'there is a great calm. God grant that it may be so with thee, my child!' and he laid his hand tenderly upon my poor spoilt head. Then I opened my heart to the good man, telling him all about my dear lady's execution, and that my true lover, Sir Hubert Blair, still lay in the Tower under sentence of death, adding that it was my dread, night and day, that they would take his life in the same way as that in which they had already taken my poor mistress's. 'If they do I shall die,' I wailed. '_I cannot live! I cannot live if Hubert is beheaded too!_' Master Jack Fish looked very grave. He was thinking, as he afterwards told me, of the hundreds of rebels who were being condemned to death on all sides, and that the prisons were full, and even the poor men were packed into the churches, to await their turn to hang upon the gibbets set up by the roadsides and elsewhere. Sir Thomas Wyatt was to be beheaded on April 11, and it was not likely that Sir Hubert Blair, who had aided and abetted him in everything, would be set free. 'There is only one person in the land who can do it,' he said at length. 'Queen Mary can pardon your lover, if she likes.' Queen Mary, the murderer, as she seemed to me, of her poor young relation, my dear mistress, and of many, many more. Was it likely that a heart so hard could be touched by another woman's woe? Was it possible that the hand which signed Lady Jane's death warrant would sign the pardon of a much more aggressive rebel at my request? Yet memory recalled to me a woman, unhappy, lying sleepless on her bed, to whom I sang, with the result that my singing touched her heart, arousing generosity and kindness. Could I possibly obtain the chance once more of singing to her, and then, haply, pleading, pleading as for my life and more than life, that she would spare my lover? I broke out into eager words, acquainting Master Fish with the manner in which I got into the Tower before to go to my dear lady, by singing to the queen, and then winning the boon from her; and he listened very feelingly, almost as much excited about the matter as I was. When I had told him all, he asked the name of the physician by whose means I had obtained access to the queen, and where he lived; and when I acquainted him with the fact that it was Dr. Massingbird, who had a surgery in the Strand, though he was frequently at Court, he left me in haste, saying that he would go to see what could be done. * * * * *