Ralegh was marked down by Cecil, and Ralegh fell. He knew that his career was at an end, as he passed from the palace at Winchester to the castle. His last request had been that his death might not be an ignominious one. His life was filled with great schemes of absorbing interest; he was at the height of his great powers. He had felt them in full play as he withstood the charges. Nothing availed him any more. As he sat in the prison-room of the castle awaiting the news and manner of his death, a sudden furious passion to continue the life, over which he had such mastery, seized and took possession of him. He must live. At any cost he must live. There was so much that he had not yet done. The immense vitality of the man rose within him and tortured him by its resistless strength. He must make one last effort for life; and his wife and child--they would be poor and shamed. He was famous throughout England for his pride. Pride and vitality fought within him. For now his only hope of reprieve lay in the King's mercy, and James liked the consciousness of power that comes from a great man's supplication. Vitality conquered. He supplicated the King for his life. He, who had dared death in all death's guises, could not wait for death to come slowly while still there remained one chance of life. The spirit of life was too strong in him for that. His letters to the King do not, as many have said, point to meanness of spirit; they bear witness to the indomitable vitality, which was his characteristic, and which would not allow him to rest. Be sure he knew, with that amazing intellect, well enough the stress of his future life; he knew well enough that it was no great boon for which he pleaded. His youth was gone; his possessions had been taken away; his name was sullied. He knew that the four walls of a prison would be his probable horizon, he who desired to explore new countries. But the spirit of life, which made him a great man, mastered him and forced him now to plead for his life like a little man, which he could never be. "No poltroon could have begged for life more abjectly than he did." So they write of him. But his letters sound the deep note of tragedy. They do not make Ralegh's name odious, but they stigmatize the name of the King for whose benefit they could be composed and upon whom they could take effect. Ralegh at last knew the man with whom he was dealing for his life, and he brought all his power of intellect to bear upon making use of the knowledge in this his ultimate emergency.