‘“Because he knows my secret—my shameful secret. His name is Reginald Talbot, and he was at one time my friend. We quarrelled about some poems of his, and from that moment he has done his best to ruin me. He tried to prove that I had forged one of the Shakespeare papers, and failed in it; he pretended to be satisfied at the time with the evidence in the matter, as the others were, but from that moment he dogged my footsteps. He is a sneaking, prying hound. ‘“One day, when I was at work in my chambers, forging manuscripts, I saw his face at my window; he had climbed up to it by a ladder, and perceived what I was about. There was no hope of concealment any longer, so I unlocked the door and let him in. I told him all—it is a long story, but it is written here (again he touched his breast-pocket), and besought him to have mercy upon me. His heart was like the nether millstone, as I knew it would be. He asked me with a sneer what I should do now, and whether I had any new treasure of Shakespeare’s with which to enrich the world. I told him of the ‘Vortigern,’ which I was then projecting, but which, of course, it was now in his power to put a stop to. Then he proposed a compromise. He was very vain of his verses, and he undertook, upon condition that he was allowed to write some portion of the play himself, to keep silence upon the matter. He had the same mad desire that I had, that the world should take his poetry to be from Shakespeare’s pen. I consented of course, for I had no choice. All his wrath against me seemed to have evaporated at once. He was intensely pleased; and from that time we worked together. Moreover, when the committee appointed to decide upon the genuineness of the Shakespeare manuscripts hesitated to accept them because there was no other witness to their discovery save myself, Talbot came forward, as we had agreed that he should do, and deposed that he had seen my patron from the Temple, and the collection from which the paper had been taken. His evidence carried the day and assured me of my position. On the other hand, Talbot wrote so feebly that I felt convinced not a line of his would survive criticism, and, unknown to him, I composed the whole play independently of his assistance.