Scottish anarchy in which she had lost her crown; and there she met, for the first time, the gaze of the crafty and vigilant Sir Francis Walsingham, whose mephistophelian devices had led her to the precipice over which she now hung, without an arm to save her. CHAPTER XII. THE EVIDENCE AGAINST THE QUEEN OF SCOTS. Replying to the accusations brought against her, Mary did not deny that, having given up hope of being liberated by Elizabeth, she had treated with foreign powers for her deliverance; but she protested that she had never consented to the assassination of Elizabeth, and that she would rather remain all her life in prison than stain her conscience with that crime. Nor can I see that any evidence had been produced to prove that she did. Her intercepted letter in reply to Babington, in which she was said to have sanctioned the projected murder of Elizabeth, was not exhibited at the trial. Here we find the same shuffling as in the case of the Casket Letters. If her accusers had decisive proof of her guilt, why did they not give her a fair trial, and employ those means which would make her guilt evident? Babington, instead of being kept as a witness, was put to death. Her two secretaries, who had been terrified into testifying to something,--what exactly they did testify we cannot be certain,--were kept out of the way, and never confronted with their mistress. Her letter on which the case depended had been written in cipher; yet the original in cipher was shown neither to her secretaries nor to herself, but only what was passed off as a translation of it into French. But what need of this traffic in second-hand documents, if the original, which would settle all dispute, could be safely exposed to the light of investigation? Neither the strained dialectics of a Hume, nor the brilliant rhetoric of a Froude, can avail against the force of argument springing from Walsingham’s determination not to exhibit the original documents. Mary had been charged with being party to a plot for the murder of Elizabeth, and her correspondence with Babington was made the basis of evidence against her. Hence common justice demanded that the correspondence should be taken, as far as possible, at first hand. Yet, Walsingham and Philipps, although they had in their possession, at least, a minute in Mary’s own hand of her last answer to Babington and the same cast into the form of a letter in French by Nau, made use of what they alleged was a copy of that incriminating answer. Mary denied that she had ever dictated the words of Philipps’ decipher in reference to the murder of Elizabeth. Philipps, the associate of Walsingham, and the bitter enemy of Mary, went sponsor for the correctness of the decipher. The trial therefore was reduced to a contest between the veracity of Mary and the veracity of Philipps. It is hardly to be doubted that, guilty or not guilty, Mary would have