"But does not the warrant itself prove something one way or the other?" said Mr. Ferrar. "These things are very difficult to judge upon," said the gentleman. "The expert to whom the Committee gave it pronounced it a forgery upon the spot, but he has been greatly blamed for precipitancy; and others to whom it has been shown pronounce it genuine. Some of the letters certainly are not like the King’s, but the style of the hand is the King’s, they say, even in these unusual letters. By the way, if you had seen Inglesant’s guilty look when the expert took the paper in his hand, you would say with me it was a forgery. You could not, to my mind, have a stronger proof." "But if the King had ordered this, would not he help Mr. Inglesant?" Mary Collet ventured to say. "Help? madam," said the gentleman warmly, "when did the King help any of his friends?" "Whichever way it is," said Mr. Ferrar mildly, "he cannot help. To help would be to condemn himself in public opinion, which in these unhappy distractions he dare not do. Did Lord Biron speak to Mr. Inglesant, sir?" "Very little. They taunted each other once, and seemed about to come to blows. All the evidence went to show that Lord Biron suspected him from the first." The gentleman soon after left. Mr. Ferrar returned to the dining-room after seeing him to his horse, and found Mary Collet sitting where they had left her, lost in sad and humiliating thought. He sat down near her and said kindly,— "My dear Mrs. Mary, I hardly know which of the two alternatives is the best for your friend—for my friend; but it is better at least for you to know the truth, and I think I can now pretty much tell which is the true one. If this plot were altogether the Jesuits’, John Inglesant would not say it. If the King had no hand in it, proof would be given a thousand ways without having recourse to this. There are other facts which to my mind are conclusive that this way of thinking is the right one, but I need not tell them all to you. What I have said I should say to none but you. You will see that it is of the utmost importance that you say nothing of it to any. I believe you may comfort yourself in thinking that, according to the light which is given him, John Inglesant is following what he believes to be his duty, and none can say at any rate that it is a smooth and easy path he has chosen to walk in." Mary Collet thanked him, her beautiful eyes full of tears, and left the room. A few days afterwards the news ran like wildfire over England that the King had left Oxford secretly, and that no one knew where he was; and a night or two afterwards Mr. John Ferrar was called up by a gentleman who said he was Dr. Hudson, the King’s Chaplain, and that the King was alone, a few paces from the door, and that he would immediately fetch him in.