"May be! But by G----d! two men will prove it."
"Two men?" quoth my lord, his ear caught by that.
"Ay, two men! And two men are enough, in treason."
My lord stared hard before him. "Who is the second?" he said at last.
"A dubious fellow, yet good enough for the purpose," the Under-Secretary answered, overjoyed that he had at last got a hearing. "A man named Matthew Smith, long suspected of Jacobite practices, and arrested with the others at the time of the late conspiracy, but released, as he says----"
"Well?"
"Corruptly," quoth the Under-Secretary coolly, and laid his hand on the check-string.
My lord sprang in his seat. "What?" he cried; and uttered an oath, a thing to which he rarely condescended. Then, "It is true I know the man----"
"He is in the Countess's service."
"In her husband's. And he was brought before me. But the warrant was against one John Smith--or William Smith, I forget which--and I knew this man to be Matthew Smith; and the messenger himself avowing a mistake, I released the man."