"Waste of time?" he cried. "We would be better employed looking to ourselves and slipping away to Romney, would we? But you are fools! You are babes! There is the evidence that can swear to you all! There is the evidence keen to do it! There is the evidence in your hands! And you will let him escape?" "There is evidence without him," said King sulkily. "Where is Prendergast?" "Oh, he is honest." "But where is he? And where is Porter?" "Where is Sir John Fenwick for that matter?" replied the man who had answered for Prendergast. "He is too high and mighty to mix with us, and will only eat the chestnut when we have got it out of the fire. For that matter, where are Friend and Parkyns? They are not here." "Pshaw!" Ferguson cried, in a rage at the digression. "Why will you be thinking of them? Cannot you see that they are tainted, they are in it? They cannot if they will! And they are gentlemen besides, and not dirty knaves like this fellow." "For the matter of that," said Cassel, bluntly, "Preston was a lord. But he sold Ashton." The words brought a kind of cold breath of suspicion into the room, at the chill touch of which each looked stealthily at his neighbour, as if he said, "Is it he? Or he?" Ferguson seeing on this that he made little progress, and that the men, though they looked at me vengefully, were not to be kindled, grew furious and more furious, and began to storm and rave. But Charnock in a moment cut him short. "Mr. Ferguson is so far right," said he, "that if we let this person go to perfect his evidence against us, we shall be very foolish. Clearly, it is to set a premium on treason." "Then let Mr. Ferguson deal with him," Cassel answered, curtly. "He is his man, and it is his business. I don't lay a hand on him, and that is flat." "Nor I! Nor I!" cried several, with eagerness. God knows if they thought in their hearts to curry favour with me. "You are all mad!" Ferguson cried, beating the air. "And you are a coward!" Cassel retorted. "I'd as soon trust him as you. If you are taken you'll peach, Ferguson! G-- ---- you! I know you will. You will peach! You are as white-livered a cur as ever lived!" Then, seeing them divided, and the most bloody-minded of them--for such Cassel had been a short time before--taking up my cause, I thought that for certain the bitterness of death was past; and I took courage, discerning for the first time solid land beyond the deeps and black suffocating fears through which I had passed. For the first time I allowed my thoughts to dwell on the future, and myself to hope and plan. But the warm current of returning life had scarcely coursed through my veins and set my heart beating, before Charnock's cold voice, taking up the tale, smote on my ear, and in a moment dashed my jubilation. There was that in his tone gripped my heart afresh.