"_One, Ludar, an Irishman, who carried certain Letters abroad. He lieth in ye Tower of London, waiting Her Majesty's pleasure_." The summer passed, and each week the maiden's cheek grew paler. She had said little when Jeannette showed her the name on the proof which I had kept. But she quietly took the paper and hid it in her bosom, and for a day kept herself to her chamber. After that she rarely mentioned Ludar's name, and when we spoke of him to her, she always changed the talk to something else. Once or twice, in the late summer evenings, I took her and Jeannette to row on the river. And on each occasion we dropped on the tide to below London Bridge, where standing out in the gloom of twilight we could see the great frowning Tower which held still, as we hoped, a life dear to us all. But as the weeks sped by, with one consent we let go even that hope; and on the last evening, when we rowed, the maiden said-- "Humphrey, row us some other way to-night." And as she spoke, her face looked to me scarcely less white than the shivering moonbeams on the water. About the middle of the autumn, I met Will Peake one day, who told me that there had been of late not a few men hanged at Tyburn and elsewhere; some for recent treasons, and others whose sentence had been overhanging ever since the conspiracies concerning the Scotch Queen. When I pressed him closer, he said he had been present at one hanging at Tyburn, but that was of a debaser of coins. But a friend of his, said he, had seen four traitors hanged, drawn, and quartered; of whom he knew the names of three. But the other, thought to be a Scotchman or Irishman, no one knew his name. I begged Will to take me to his friend that I might hear more, and plainly told him my reason. Whereat he drew a very long face, and said he thought better of me than to consort with such vile carrion as these traitors to her Majesty. Nevertheless he took me to his friend to hear what he had to say. His friend sickened me with a long story of the horrible death of these men, whereby he thought to entertain me as he had entertained not a few other idle fellows during the past month. "Oh," said he, "pity on us you saw not the fourth rogue dangle--be hanged to him that he had no name! I tell you, Master Dexter, it almost made me creep to see all they did to make an end of him. First of all--" "Hold thy peace, beast!" roared I. "Keep it to thyself. But tell me, what was he like?" "If I be a beast," said he, mightily offended, "thou art like to hear that better from anyone else." "Your pardon," said I, "but my imagination is quick, and your horrible story well-nigh made me ill." He took this as a mighty compliment, and smoothed down forthwith.