too irresistible, and I laughed all cowardice to scorn.

Besides, I remembered the wondrous gaze of poor Mr. Anthony Dare, that sweetly handsome youth, that desperate rebel, that chained and tattered captive, whose fate was to be a dreadful death upon the Tree. I remembered him, and although pity is the name that I resolutely refuse to have writ down as the motive for this merry plot, as all the world knows that I never had a heart in which to kindle it; but remembering that lad, I say, straight had I done with indecision, for I sprang up smartly, with a rude word for the King. And I make bold to declare that she who pulled the blinds aside an instant later to gaze into the night was the most determined rebel that ever grinned through hemp.