The Heart

I lay in prison until the twenty-ninth day of May, Royal Oak Day. I

know not quite how it came to pass, but none of my brother's efforts

toward my release met with any success. I heard afterward some

whispers as to the cause, being that so many of high degree were

concerned in the riots, and that if I, a poor devil of a convict

tutor, were let off too cheaply, why then the rest of them must be

let loose only at a rope's end, and that it would never do to send

me back to Drake Hill scot free, while Sir Humphrey Hyde and Major

Robert Beverly and my Lord Estes, and others, were in durance, and

some high in office in great danger of discovery. At all events,

whatever may have been the reason, my release could not be effected,

and in prison I lay for all those days, but with more comfort, since

either Catherine or Mary--Mary I think it must have been--made a

curtain for my window, which kept out that burning eye of the

western sun, and also fashioned a gnat veil to overspread my pallet,

so the flies could not get at me. I knew there were others in

prison, but knew not that three of them were led forth to be hung,

which might have been my fate, had I been a free man, nor knew that

another was released on condition that he build a bridge over

Dragon's Swamp.

This last chance, my friends had striven sorely to

get for me, but had not succeeded, though they had offered large

sums, my brother being willing to tax the estate heavily. Some

covert will there was at work against me, and it may be I could

mention it, but I like not mentioning covert wills, but only such as

be downright, and exercised openly in the faces of all men. I lay

there not so uncomfortably, being aware of a great delight that the

tobacco was cut, whether or no, as indeed it was on many

plantations, and the King cheated out of great wealth.

This end of proceedings, with no Bacon to lead us, did not surprise

nor disappoint me. Then, too, the fact that I was cleared of

suspicion of theft in the eyes of her I loved and her family, at

least, filled me with an ecstasy which sometimes awoke me from

slumber like a pain. And though I was quite resolved not to let that

beloved maid fling away herself upon me, unless my innocence was

proven world-wide, and to shield her at all costs to myself, yet

sometimes the hope that in after years I might be able to wed her

and not injure her, started up within me. She came to see me

whenever she could steal away, Madam Cavendish being still in that

state of hatred against me, for my participation in the riot, though

otherwise disposed enough to give her consent to our marriage on the

spot. And every day came my brother John and Catherine, and now and

then Parson Downs. And the parson used to bring me choice spirits in

his pocket, and tobacco, though I could touch only the latter for

fear of inflaming my wounds, and he used to sit and read me some of

Will Shakespeare's Plays, which he bore under his cassock, and a

prayer-book openly in hand, that being the only touch of hypocrisy

which ever I saw about Parson Downs.