The plotter, who, I think, had expected any answer but this, and, it may be, had never considered his own position, should the Duke stand firm, roared out a furious "You lie!" And then again in a frenzy, as the consequences rose more clearly before him, "You lie!" he cried, striking his hand on the table. "You will not do it! You will not dare to do it!" "Mr. Ferguson," the Duke answered haughtily, "I do not suffer persons of your condition to tell me what I dare, or do not dare; or persons of any condition to give me the lie. Be good enough to open the door!" "Sign the paper!" the conspirator hissed. His face, at no time sightly, was now distorted by fear and the rage of defeat; while the chair on the back of which he leaned his left hand, jerked this way and that as if the palsy had him. "Sign the paper, will you? Or your blood be on your own head!" The Duke's only answer was to point to the door with his cane. "Open it!" he said, his breath coming a little quickly, but his manner otherwise unmoved. "Do you hear me?" But either Ferguson's rage had so much the mastery of him that he could no longer control himself, or he was desperate, seeing into what an abyss the other's firmness was pushing him; or from the first he had determined on this course in the last resort. At any rate at that word, and instead of complying, he fell back a step and with a dark face drew a pistol from the pocket of his long coat. "Sign!" he cried, his voice whistling in his throat, as he levelled the arm at my lord's head. "Sign, you Roman spawn, or I'll spill your brains! Sign, or you don't go out of this room alive! Has the Lord's foot been put on the neck of his enemies that such as you should divide the spoil!" There was nothing to sign, for he had not produced the paper. But in the delirium of fear and excitement into which he had fallen, he was unconscious of this, and of all except that he was in danger of falling into the pit he had digged for another. His hand shook so violently that every moment I expected the pistol to explode, with his will or without it; his fears no less than his despair putting my lord in danger. What he, who stood thus exposed to naked death thought in his heart while his existence hung on a shaking finger, I can not say, nor if he prayed; for no man talked less of religion, to be, as I trust he was, a believer; while the pride which supported him in that crisis was as powerful to close his lips after the event. "Put that down!" was all he said; and met the other's eyes without blenching, though I think that he was a trifle paler than he had been. "Sign!" answered the madman with an oath. "Put it down!" repeated the Duke; and doubtless his courage by imposing a restraint on the other's headiness postponed, though it could not avert, the catastrophe.