of the circle of God’s mercy need not be too closely considered.... But he paled with the issue thrown so by the man himself between them. He paled; then desperately opened the gates to anger the restorative, and jealousy that shredded shame to the winds. Moreover, there flashed into his soul in storm a suspicion. “Who struck me? Knowest thou _that_? If thou knowest that, then, indeed—” But Aderhold knew not that. He stood with folded arms and a steady face. It was now to summon the ancient virtue, to play truly the Republican, the free man, now to summon courage for others. Life! Life! And what men and women had suffered would be suffered again. And still the ether sprang clear and time stretched endlessly, and what was lost here might be found there. He looked at Harry Carthew with a steadfast face, and reckoned that the younger man was unhappier than he. The door opened with a heavy sound and Master Clement reappeared. Carthew flung himself toward him, his face distorted. “Naught—naught! And now I think the worst—I tell you I think the worst—” “I have always thought the worst,” said Master Clement. “Send him hence now, and let us see these others.” ... Aderhold moved before the red-faced, wry-mouthed gaoler through the dark passageway and down the stair, back to the chill and darkness of his dungeon. Within it, the gaoler made a moment’s pause before he should turn and, departing, shut the thick door with the sound of a falling slab of a sepulchre. He stood, to the eye a rude and portentous figure, but to the inward vision giving off at times relieving glints. “Everything goes,” he said in a deep and rusty voice, “by looking at more than just itself. In another day in England or in another country to-day, you’d have been racked or put to the scarpines till, when they wanted you, we’d have had to carry you!” “That’s true enough,” said Aderhold. “One should have a grateful heart!... True enough—as I know—as I know!” “It’s ten days to assizes,” said the gaoler. “It isn’t lawful to put folk to the question in England—though if you stand mute, there’s _peine forte et dure_—and of course nobody’s going to do anything that isn’t lawful! But you know yourself there are ways—” “Yes,” said Aderhold. “Do you mean that they will be used?” But the gaoler grew surly again. “I don’t know anything except that they want your confession. They’ve got a story that’s going to be sold in chap-books all over England—and ballads made—and of course they want all the strange things in. It’s like the pictures of George and the Dragon—the more dreadful the dragon, the taller man is the George! The town’s all abuzz—with the King writing a learned letter, and the bishop coming and the Witch Judge.—They want a dreadful dragon and the tallest kind of George!” “I see,” said Aderhold. “Even the dragon, the spear at his throat, expected to flatter!—O Diogenes! let us laugh, if we die for it!” “Anan?” said the gaoler. “Well, it stands that way.”