'That is another uncomfortable circumstance. You know Talbot?'
'An honest man, and a good officer, at Preston or in Spain, but a sponge for drink. A pity he was ever let into the plot!'
'Well, he got the ballad from someone with whom he had been drinking at the Little Fox under the Hill, not a fashionable resort.'
'Did he name his friend?'
'He was drunk enough to begin by calling him Mr. Pope.'
'Mr. Pope, the poet?'
'He took that back; and said the poetry put Mr. Pope into his head. The man's real name, he remembered, was Scrotton. I can't guess who he was, friend or spy, but we may take it that he knows what the Crow knows.'
'Thank God for that!' cried Kelly.
'You rejoice on very singular occasions, and are grateful for very small mercies,' said Mr. Wogan, who found it his turn to be surprised. 'What are you so thankful for?'
'Thankful that a woman need not have done this thing, and that my folly may not be the cause of this disaster. Another knew everything--Pope--Scrotton--the ballad! Who wrote the ballad? Who of our enemies knew a word about Rose? Are you blind? Who was at Avignon, spying on me, when I first met Rose? Who hates Lady Oxford no less than he hates me? Whose name was the unhappy tippler trying to remember? Scrotton? Pope?'