“Oh, sir!  I have been as one distraught all this past year,” he said.  “How often since I have been shut up here, and I have seen how I have been duped and gulled, have your words come back to me, that to enter on crooked ways was the way to destruction for myself and others, and that I might only be serving worse men than myself!  And yet they were priests who misled me!”

“Even in your own religion there are many priests who would withhold you from such crimes,” said Richard.

“There are!  I know it!  I have spoken with them.  They say no priest can put aside the eternal laws of God’s justice.  So these others, Chidiock here, Donne and Salisbury, always cried out against the slaying of the Queen, though—­wretch that I was—­and gulled by Ballard and Savage, I deemed the exploit so noble and praiseworthy that I even joined Tichborne with me in that accursed portraiture!  Yea, you may well deem me mad, but it was Gifford who encouraged me in having it made, no doubt to assure our ruin.  Oh, Mr. Talbot! was ever man so cruelly deceived as me?”

“It is only too true, Antony.  My heart is full of rage and indignation when I think thereof.  And yet, my poor lad, what concerns thee most is to lay aside all such thoughts as may not tend to repentance before God.”

“I know it, I know it, sir.  All the more that we shall die without the last sacraments.  Commend us to the prayers of our Queen, sir, and of her.  But to proceed with what imports you to know for her sake, while I have space to speak.”

He proceeded to tell how, between dissipation and intrigue, he had lived in a perpetual state of excitement, going backwards and forwards between London and Lichfield to attend to the correspondence with Queen Mary and the Spanish ambassador in France, and to arrange the details of the plot; always being worked up to the highest pitch by Gifford and Ballard, while Langston continued to be the great assistant in all the correspondence.  All the time Sir Francis Walsingham, who was really aware of all, if not the prime mover in the intrigue, appeared perfectly unsuspicious; often received Babington at his house, and discussed a plan of sending him on a commission to France, while in point of fact every letter that travelled in the Burton barrels was deciphered by Phillipps, and laid before the Secretary before being read by the proper owners.  In none of these, however, as Babington could assure Mr. Talbot, had Cicely been mentioned,—­the only danger to her was through Langston.

Things had come to a climax in July, when Babington had been urged to obtain from Mary such definite approbation of his plans as might satisfy his confederates, and had in consequence written the letter and obtained the answer, copies of which had been read to him at his private examination, and which certainly contained fatal matter to both him and the Queen.