expose the lives and fortunes of how many thousand innocent persons? . . .
These are considerations that weigh with me, and that I hope will weigh
no less with yourself, Mr. Balfour, as a lover of your country, good
government, and religious truth."

"You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it," said I. "I will
try on my side to be no less honest. I believe your policy to be sound.
I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you
may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oaths of the
high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man--or
scarce a man yet--the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two
things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful
death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my
head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It's the way that I am made. If the
country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this be wilful
blindness, that he may enlighten me before too late."

He had heard me motionless, and stood so a while longer.

"This is an unexpected obstacle," says he, aloud, but to himself.

"And how is your lordship to dispose of me?" I asked.

"If I wished," said he, "you know that you might sleep in gaol?"

"My lord," says I, "I have slept in worse places."

"Well, my boy," said he, "there is one thing appears very plainly from
our interview, that I may rely on your pledged word. Give me your honour
that you will be wholly secret, not only on what has passed to-night,