They drew off silently a little way into the bracken, there to await the issue. Sick at heart, overcome with despair, they flung their completely exhausted bodies into the wet grass. CHAPTER XXXVI THE Queen was taking counsel already with the Lord Treasurer, Cecil, her all-wise and all-powerful minister. This morning, she was in a harsh and vengeful mood. Many were the plots she had known in the course of a troubled life against the security of that person for whose well-being she had so great a reverence. And each one, as it occurred, had the effect of hardening that naturally ruthless temper to which, like others of her race, she was never afraid to give free play. The young man, Gervase Heriot, had been proved guilty upon that which was held to be good and sufficient evidence, of a plot against her life. He had been condemned to death by the Court of Star Chamber sitting in camera. But by the wanton and wicked connivance of the young daughter of Sir John Feversham, in whose custody he was held in Nottingham Castle against the time of his execution, Heriot had been able to break out of his prison. Subsequently, the condemned man, in the company of this wicked girl, had wandered about the country many weeks, finally falling in with one Shakespeare, an actor and writer for the theater, who, well knowing they were proscribed, had actively befriended them. Moreover, with unforgivable effrontery, this play-actor had chosen to make public confession of his guilt at a singularly ill-chosen time. The Queen was not in a mood to hear of leniency in this heinous matter. But Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, was a very wise man, deliberate in speech, tardy in judgment. And the view he held was at direct variance with that of his august mistress. The Lord Treasurer had already brought the cool and detached mind of a statesman to bear upon a most difficult problem. The actors in this unhappy drama were nothing to him in themselves. Heriot was a man of family, with a considerable estate in the west of England; the girl was the daughter of Sir John Feversham, a man of good reputation, who had rendered thirty years of honest service to the Queen. The man Shakespeare was by profession an actor, and of him there was nothing more to be said. Indeed, as far as the Lord Treasurer was concerned, there was nothing more to be said of any of the persons of the drama. As mere private individuals, they had not the least interest for him; the merits of their cause concerned him but little, yet public expediency, that and only that, was a thing of paramount importance in his eyes. And when all was said, this was certainly a plaguy ill matter, and it had given my lord a very anxious night.