Nicholas Doyle laughed good-naturedly.
"It is a hit, I will not deny," said he. "But what if they hold to the plan, and decline to exchange opinions when they are in the jury-box, eh, my friend? what then? So you see there are dangers. With your help we may just save my client, but it will be by no more than the skin of his teeth. Without you we may as well submit to a sentence at the outset. But," and he spoke with a voice of the deepest gravity, "all this, which makes your evidence of the greatest value to us, renders it fatal to you. I do not mince words; I set the truth frankly before you. Your evidence may serve Mr. Herbert's turn,—but there is no more than a chance of that—it will most certainly send you to an ignominious death. Every word you will speak will be a plea of guilty. And mark you, there is but one punishment for treason. It will be no stepping on to a scaffold, and reading a few protestations, and kneeling down at the block, as though you just condescended to leave the world. No, you will be drawn through the streets, trussed hand and foot, on a hurdle. Then they will hang you—for a bit, but not until you are dead. Then they will light a fire and take a knife to you—and it will seem, I fear me, a weary while before the end is reached!"
"Good God!" I interrupted him, and snatched up my hat. "Do you wish me to leave your client precisely to that same fate?"
"Where are you going?" he asked in an incredulous tone, noticing my movement.
"To Carlisle Castle," said I.
"I thought as much," said he, and took me by the arm. "I doubt if I should have said so much to you, had I not felt certain it would not weigh with you. But you are young, Mr. Clavering, very young; and though I must count you a traitor, and deserving all this punishment, I could not send you to that fate without you had counted up the cost."
"That is kindly said," I replied, and offered him my hand, which he shook very cordially. "But less than a fortnight ago I stood upon the sea-shore with never a soul in view and a ship's boat on the beach and a ship spreading its sails to set me over into France. I am not like to be turned aside now."
He looked at me with a certain shrewdness in his eyes.
"This is a reparation which you purpose? A man of the world would tell you there was no necessity for it."
"But you do not say that?" I returned.