"Shall she tell more?" went on Mistress Sheppard, looking on with triumphant satisfaction, while the king's commands were being obeyed. "Do you want to know how like the Lord's own blessed Bible Samaritan this child tended the poor bleeding sinful soul, an' strove to save his poor body; but Heaven would not have it so, an' called him to his account--" "Does your Majesty," loftily broke in Rumsey, "accept the testimony of this ranting virago, and this puling girl, or the word of a soldier?" "He can take it, or leave it," cried Mistress Sheppard, throwing all her court manners to the winds, "like pigs leave pearls for offal. The witness of living truth," she went on in slower and solemn tones, "and of loyal hearts, is no thing to be despised. But the testimony of the dead is mightier than the angel's last trumpet; and that looks his Majesty in the face;" and Mistress Sheppard pointed to the paper in the king's hands. [Sidenote: The tables turned.] "It is enough," said Charles, gazing with emotion on the poor faint signature of the dying man's hand, and the somewhat tremulous but clerkly little characters beneath it. "Richard Goodenough being dead, yet speaketh. Arrest that traitor!" and he pointed to Rumsey. Like a wild beast at bay, the guilty wretch glared round him. All chance of escape was worse than hopeless; and the guard which now left Lawrence Lee a free man, and hastened to surround their new prisoner, had apparently an easy task in securing him. Ere, however, they could touch him, he plunged his hand into his breast, and with a heavy, but lightning-quick sideways lurch, eluded the grasp of his captors, and breaking into a low rageful howl stumbled forward within a couple of paces of the king. "So then!" he cried with an imprecation, snatching his hidden hand from the bosom of his doublet. [Sidenote: Rumsey's last attempt.] Time only to see that it clutches some gleaming weapon which he turns with a savage thrust upon the king's breast,--time only for a moment of dumb stricken horror instantly broken by shrieks and cries mingling with the deafening report of a pistol, whose smoke as it clears in thin bluish vapour reveals Rumsey prostrate at the king's feet beneath the grip of Lawrence Lee, the fingers of the would-be regicide's right hand still grasping the pistol, whose muzzle points straight upward to the broad beam overhead, shattered and charred, and riddled with its discharged contents! CHAPTER XXXII. "So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.--" _Shakspere_.