After Dawson told me that my miserable story was known throughout the Hall, I sought Madge, and found her with Aunt Dorothy.  She was weeping, and I at once knew that I was too late with my confession.  I spoke her name, “Madge,” and stood by her side awaiting her reply.

“Is it true, Malcolm?” she asked.  “I cannot believe it till I hear it from your lips.”

“It was true,” I responded.  “I promised to help Queen Mary escape, and I promised to go with her; but within one hour of the time when I gave my word I regretted it as I have never regretted anything else in all my life.  I resolved that, while I should, according to my promise, help the Scottish queen escape, I would not go with her.  I resolved to wait here at Haddon to tell all to you and to our queen, and then I would patiently take my just punishment from each.  My doom from the queen, I believed, would probably be death; but I feared more your—­God help me!  It is useless for me to speak.”  Here I broke down and fell upon my knees, crying, “Madge, Madge, pity me, pity me!  Forgive me if you can, and, if our queen decrees it, I shall die happy.”

In my desperation I caught the girl’s hand, but she drew it quickly from me, and said:—­

“Do not touch me!”

She arose to her feet, and groped her way to her bedroom.  We were in Aunt Dorothy’s room.  I watched Madge as she sought with her outstretched hand the doorway; and when she passed slowly through it, the sun of my life seemed to turn black.  Just as Madge passed from the room, Sir William St. Loe, with two yeomen, entered by Sir George’s door and placed irons upon my wrist and ankles.  I was led by Sir William to the dungeon, and no word was spoken by either of us.

I had never in my life feared death, and now I felt that I would welcome it.  When a man is convinced that his life is useless, through the dire disaster that he is a fool, he values it little, and is even more than willing to lose it.

Then there were three of us in the dungeon,—­John, Lord Rutland, and myself; and we were all there because we had meddled in the affairs of others, and because Dorothy had inherited from Eve a capacity for insane, unreasoning jealousy.

Lord Rutland was sitting on the ground in a corner of the dungeon.  John, by the help of a projecting stone in the masonry, had climbed to the small grated opening which served to admit a few straggling rays of light into the dungeon’s gloom.  He was gazing out upon the fair day, whose beauty he feared would soon fade away from him forever.

Elizabeth’s coldness had given him no hope.  It had taken all hope from his father.

The opening of the door attracted John’s attention, and he turned his face toward me when I entered.  He had been looking toward the light, and his eyes, unaccustomed for the moment to the darkness, failed at first to recognize of me.  When the dungeon door had closed behind me, he sprang down from his perch by the window, and came toward me with outstretched hands.  He said sorrowfully:—­