sake, forsooth, will let your lover perish! Your lover! yes, but you were never his, although he thinks so.  I will go hence, and tell him that you refuse to speak the thing that alone can save him from life-long wretchedness; I will go and tell him that the girl for whose sake he has brought this load of ruin on himself will not so much as lift it with her little finger!  You fair, foul devil, how I hate you!” She drew herself up to her full height, and regarded the wretched girl with such contemptuous scorn that even in her abject misery she felt its barb.

“I have not earned your hate,” said Harry, with some degree of firmness, “if I have earned your scorn; nor is it meet that you should so despise me, because I fear to anger God.”

“And man,” added the other, with bitterness.  “You fear your father’s wrath far more than Heaven’s.”

That bolt went home:  the unhappy girl did indeed stand in greater terror of her father than of the sin of perjury; and the idea of affirming upon oath what she had but a few days before so solemnly denied to him was filling her with consternation and dismay.  Still the picture that had just been drawn of the ruin that would assuredly befall her Richard, unless she interposed to save him, had more vivid colors even than that of Trevethick’s anger.  Let him kill her, if he would, after the trial was over, but Richard should go free.

“I will do your bidding, madam,” said she, suddenly, “though I perish, body and soul.”

“You say that now, girl, and it’s well and bravely said; but will you have strength to put your words to proof?  When I am gone, and there are none but Richard’s foes about you, will you resist their menaces, their arguments, their cajolements, and be true as steel?”

“I will, I will; I swear it,” answered Harry, passionately; “they shall never turn me from it.  But suppose they prevent me from leaving Gethin, from attending at the trial at all?”

“Well thought of!” answered Mrs. Gilbert, approvingly; “she has some wits, then, after all, this girl.  As for their forbidding you to give evidence, however, Mr. Weasel, who is Richard’s lawyer, will see to that.  You will be subpoenaed as a witness for the defense.  You will say, then, that it was you who opened the strong-box, and took out the notes, and gave them into Richard’s hand.”

“But how could I open the letter padlock?”

“Good, again!” answered the other; “you have asked the very question for which I have brought the answer.  Now, listen!  Have you access to your father’s watch at times when he does not wear it?”

“Yes; he does not always put it on—­never on the day he goes to market, for instance.  He comes back late, you see.”

“Just so; and sometimes, perhaps, not altogether sober.  Very good.  Now, you once opened that watch from curiosity, and saw a paper in its case with B N Z upon it.  Those letters formed the secret by which the lock was opened.  You tried it, just in fun at first, and found they did.  Do you understand?”