“However that may be, it is a noble thing to have seen such courage in a woman and a queen.  But how could they let it go so near?  I could shudder now to think of the risk to her person!”

“There goes more to policy than you yet wot of,” said Will, in his patronising tone.  “In truth, Barnwell had started off unknown to his comrades, hoping to have the glory of the achievement all to himself by forestalling them, or else Mr. Secretary would have been warned in time to secure the Queen.”

“But wherefore leave these traitors at large to work mischief?”

“See you not, you simple Humfrey, that, as I said methinks some time since, it is well sometimes to give a rogue rope enough and he will hang himself?  Close the trap too soon, and you miss the biggest rat of all.  So we waited until the prey seemed shy and about to escape.  Babington had, it seems, suspected Maude or Langston, or whatever you call him, and had ridden out of town, hiding in St. John’s Wood with some of his fellows, till they were starved out, and trying to creep into some outbuildings at Harrow, were there taken, and brought into London the morning we came away.  Ballard, the blackest villain of all, is likewise in ward, and here we are to complete our evidence.”

“Nay, throughout all you have said, I have heard nothing to explain this morning’s work.”

Will laughed outright.  “And so you think all this would have been done without a word from their liege lady, the princess they all wanted to deliver from captivity!  No, no, sir!  ’Twas thus.  There’s an honest man at Burton, a brewer, who sends beer week by week for this house, and very good ale it is, as I can testify.  I wish I had a tankard of it here to qualify these mulberries.  This same brewer is instructed by Gifford, whose uncle lives in these parts, to fit a false bottom to one of his barrels, wherein is a box fitted for the receipt of letters and parcels.  Then by some means, through Langston I believe, Babington and Gifford made known to the Queen of Scots and the French ambassador that here was a sure way of sending and receiving letters.  The Queen’s butler, old Hannibal, was to look in the bottom of the barrel with the yellow hoop, and one Barnes, a familiar of Gifford and Babington, undertook the freight at the other end.  The ambassador, M. de Chateauneuf, seemed to doubt at first, and sent a single letter by way of experiment, and that having been duly delivered and answered, the bait was swallowed, and not a week has gone by but letters have come and gone from hence, all being first opened, copied, and deciphered by worthy Mr. Phillipps, and every word of them laid before the Council.”

“Hum!  We should not have reckoned that fair play when we went to Master Sniggius’s,” observed Humfrey, as he heard his companion’s tone of exultation.

“Fair play is a jewel that will not pass current in statecraft,” responded Cavendish.  “Moreover, that the plotter should be plotted against is surely only his desert.  But thou art a mere sailor, my Talbot, and these subtilties of policy are not for thee.”