'Now, you have done it!' Archie said triumphantly. 'If she'd confessed, we might have shown mercy. Now we shall have to prove it, and if we do I'm sorry for her, that's all!' 'If she says "Guilty, and she won't do it again!"' suggested Winifred. 'It's too late for that now,' said Archie, who was not going to have his trial cut short in that way: 'no, we must prove it.' 'But how are you going to prove it?' 'You wait. I've been in court once or twice with papa, and seen him prove all sorts of things. First, we must have in the fellow who sold the poison--the apothecary, you know. Oh, I say, though, I forgot that--he's the judge; that won't do!' 'Then you can't prove it after all--I'm so glad!' cried the Queen, with her eyes sparkling. 'One would think you rather liked being poisoned,' said Archie, in an offended tone. 'I like magnesia, and it isn't poison, really--it's medicine.' 'It isn't magnesia now; it's arsenic; and she shan't get off like this. I'll call the apothecary's young man, he'll prove it (this brick is the apothecary's young man). There, he says it's all right; she did it right enough. Now for the sentence! (put a penwiper on the judge's head, will you, Winnie; it's solemner).' 'What's a sentence?' asked Winifred, much disturbed at these ill-omened arrangements. 'You'll see; this is the judge talking now: "Lady Ethelinda, you've been found guilty of very bad conduct; you've put arsenic in your beloved Queen's tea!"' 'Why, I haven't _had_ tea yet!' protested the Sovereign. "Her Majesty is respectfully ordered not to interrupt the judge when he's summing up; it puts him out. Well, as I was saying, Lady Ethelinda, I'm sorry to tell you that we shall have to cut your head off!"' 'What have I done?' thought the jester; 'she'll think I'm in earnest; she'll never forgive me!' But Ethelinda was perfectly delighted, for not one of her heroines had ever been in such a romantic position as this. 'And of course,' she thought, 'it will all come right in the end; it always does.' Winifred, however, was terrified by the sternness of the court: 'Archie,' she cried, 'she mustn't have her head cut off.' 'It will be all right, Winnie, if you will only leave it to me and not interfere. You promised not to interrupt, and yet you will keep on doing it!' Archie's head was full of executions just then, for he had been reading 'The Tower of London;' he had been artfully leading up to an execution from the very first, and he meant to have his own way. But first he amused himself by working upon Winifred's feelings, which was a bad habit of his on these occasions. To do him justice, he did not know how keenly she felt things, and how soon she forgot it was only pretence; it flattered him to see how easily he could make Winifred cry about nothing, and he never guessed what real pain he was giving her.