_Fred._ My comrades? _King._ I’m afraid you don’t appreciate the delicacy of your position. You were apprenticed to us---- _Fred._ Until I reached my twenty-first year. _King._ No, until you reached your twenty-first _birthday_ (_producing document_), and, going by birthdays, you are as yet only five and a quarter. _Fred._ You don’t mean to say you are going to hold me to that? _King._ No, we merely remind you of the fact, and leave the rest to your sense of duty. _Fred._ (_wildly_). Don’t put it on that footing! As I was merciful to you just now, be merciful to me! I implore you not to insist on the letter of your bond just as the cup of happiness is at my lips! _Ruth._ We insist on nothing; we content ourselves with pointing out to you _your duty_. _Fred._ (_after a pause_). Well, you have appealed to my sense of duty, and my duty is only too clear. I abhor your infamous calling; I shudder at the thought that I have ever been mixed up with it; but duty is before all--at any price I will do my duty! _King._ Bravely spoken. Come, you are one of us once more. _Fred._ Lead on; I follow. (_Suddenly._) Oh, horror! _King and Ruth._ What is the matter? _Fred._ Ought I to tell you? No, no, I cannot do it; and yet, as one of your band---- _King._ Speak out, I charge you, by that sense of conscientiousness to which we have never yet appealed in vain. _Fred._ General Stanley, the father of my Mabel---- _King and Ruth._ Yes, yes! _Fred._ He escaped from you on the plea that he was an orphan? _King._ He did. _Fred._ It breaks my heart to betray the honoured father of the girl I adore, but, as your apprentice, I have no alternative. It is my duty to tell you that General Stanley is no orphan. _King and Ruth._ What! _Fred._ More than that, he never was one! _King._ Am I to understand that, to save his contemptible life, he dared to practise on our credulous simplicity? (_FREDERIC nods as he weeps._) Our revenge shall be swift and terrible. We will go and collect our band and attack Tremorden Castle this very night. _Fred._ But---- _King._ Not a word. He is doomed. (_Goes up and down stage._) TRIO. KING AND RUTH. FREDERIC. Away, away, my heart’s on Away, away, ere I expire-- fire, I burn this base deception to I find my duty hard to do repay, to-day! This very day my vengeance dire My heart is filled with anguish dire, Shall glut itself in gore. It strikes me to the core. Away, away! Away, away!