Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/82

 little girl. To watch him smile and to hear him speaking like a most tender music, none could have discerned what his emotion was, unless one had the experience of a lifetime to bear upon his ways. And for myself, 'twas only the misgivings of my heart that told me he was in great pain.

"What is it that I've done, my lord?" cries I, feeling that he must have been furnished with a very highly coloured picture of my deeds.

"I gave my word to the King," he answered me, "that I would succour his soldiers here at Cleeby for a night, and take the prisoner that they held into my keeping faithfully. Instead of that I send my maid to drug the sentry; I go out in a pair of carpet slippers in the middle of the night; I set a ladder up against the hayloft; I climb up there, and, by means of dropping through a trap into a manger, I get into the prisoner's cell and let the prisoner out; I furnish that prisoner with a pistol; I disarm an officer of the King, and cause him to be shot severely in the knee, and enable the prisoner to escape. It is in this manner that I redeem my promise to the Government of His Majesty the King."

"You, my lord!" cries I, aghast, and doubting whether he had the proper enjoyment of his mind. "Pray shatter those delusions! I, my lord—I, your daughter Bab, did that, and I can show you the wound upon my shoulder that I got." And here I chanced to sneeze, and turned it into evidence.