Why, indeed? It was a great and sore temptation, as I stood there before all those eyes. He had deserved death. I had given him up in perfect innocence. Had I any right to call on them to risk their lives that I might go harmless in conscience, and he in person? Had I---- What, was there after all some taint in my blood? Was I going to become like him--to take to myself a shame of my own earning, in the effort to escape from the burden of his ill-fame? I remembered in time the oath I had sworn, and when Kingston repeated his question, I answered him quickly. "I did not know yesterday who he was," I said. "I have discovered since that he is my father. I ask nothing on his account. Were he only my father I would not plead for him. I plead for myself," I murmured. "If you show no pity, you make me a parricide." I had done them wrong. There was something in my voice, I suppose, as I said the words which cost me so much, which wrought with almost all of them in a degree. They gazed at me with awed, wondering faces, and murmured "His father!" in low tones. They were recalling the scene of last night, the moment when I had denounced him, the curse he had hurled at me, the half-told story of which that had seemed the climax. I had wronged them. They did see the tragedy of it. Yes, they pitied me; but they showed plainly that they would still do what perhaps I should have done in their place--justice. "He knows too much!" said one. "Our lives are as good as his," muttered another--the first to become thoroughly himself again--"why should we all die for him?" The wolfish glare came back fast to their eyes. They handled their weapons impatiently. They were longing to be away. At this moment, when I saw I had indeed made my confession in vain, Master Bertie struck in. "What," he said, "if Master Carey and I take charge of him, and escorting him to his agent without, be answerable for both of them?" "You would be only putting your necks into the noose!" said Kingston. "We will risk that!" replied my friend--and what a friend and what a man he seemed amid that ignoble crew!--"I will myself promise you that if he refuse to remain with us until midnight, or tries wherever we are to raise an alarm or communicate with any one, I will run him through with my own hand? Will not that satisfy you?" "No," Master Kingston retorted, "it will not! A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!" "But the woman outside?" said one timidly. "We must run that risk!" quoth he. "In an hour or two we shall be in hiding. Come, the lot must be drawn. For this gentleman, let him stand aside."