"It does matter very much--saving your presence, Duke," Mr. Vernon answered bluntly; a sober and downright gentleman, whose after-succession to the Seals, though thought at the time to be an excessive elevation, and of the most sudden, was fully justified by his honourable career. "Pardon me, I must speak, I have been swayed too long by your Grace's extreme dislike of the topic." "Which continues," my lord said drily. "I care not a jot if it does!" Mr. Vernon cried impetuously, and then met the Duke's look of surprise and anger with, "Your Grace forgets that it is treason is in question! High Treason, not in the clouds and _in pr[oe]terito_, but _in pr[oe]senti_ and in Kent! High Treason in aiding and abetting Sir John Fenwick, an outlawed traitor, and by his mouth and hand communicating with and encouraging the King's enemies." "You are beside the mark, sir," my lord answered, in a tone of freezing displeasure. "That has nothing to do with it. It is a foolish tale which will not stand a minute. No man believes it." "May be! But by G----d! two men will prove it." "Two men?" quoth my lord, his ear caught by that. "Ay, two men! And two men are enough, in treason." My lord stared hard before him. "Who is the second?" he said at last. "A dubious fellow, yet good enough for the purpose," the Under-Secretary answered, overjoyed that he had at last got a hearing. "A man named Matthew Smith, long suspected of Jacobite practices, and arrested with the others at the time of the late conspiracy, but released, as he says----" "Well?" "Corruptly," quoth the Under-Secretary coolly, and laid his hand on the check-string. My lord sprang in his seat. "What?" he cried; and uttered an oath, a thing to which he rarely condescended. Then, "It is true I know the man----" "He is in the Countess's service." "In her husband's. And he was brought before me. But the warrant was against one John Smith--or William Smith, I forget which--and I knew this man to be Matthew Smith; and the messenger himself avowing a mistake, I released the man." "Of course," said Mr. Vernon, nodding impatiently. "Of course, but that, your Grace, is not the gravamen. It is a more serious matter that he alleges that he accompanied you to Ashford, that you there in his presence saw Sir John Fenwick, that you gave Sir John a ring--and, in a word, he confirms Sir John's statement in all points. And there being now two witnesses, the matter becomes grave. Shall I stop the coach?" And he made again as if he would twitch the cord. The Duke, wearing a very sober face--yet one wherein the light of conflict began to flicker--drummed softly on the glass with his fingers. "How do you come by his evidence?" he said at last. "Has Sir John approved against him?"