Later they heard that Lord Grey, who after the Duke — indeed, perhaps, before him — was the main leader of the rebellion, had purchased his own pardon for forty thousand pounds.  Peter Blood found this of a piece with the rest.  His contempt for King James blazed out at last.

“Why, here’s a filthy mean creature to sit on a throne.  If I had known as much of him before as I know to-day, I don’t doubt I should have given cause to be where I am now.”  And then on a sudden thought:  “And where will Lord Gildoy be, do you suppose?” he asked.

Young Pitt, whom he addressed, turned towards him a face from which the ruddy tan of the sea had faded almost completely during those months of captivity.  His grey eyes were round and questioning.  Blood answered him.

“Sure, now, we’ve never seen his lordship since that day at Oglethorpe’s.  And where are the other gentry that were taken? — the real leaders of this plaguey rebellion.  Grey’s case explains their absence, I think.  They are wealthy men that can ransom themselves.  Here awaiting the gallows are none but the unfortunates who followed; those who had the honour to lead them go free.  It’s a curious and instructive reversal of the usual way of these things.  Faith, it’s an uncertain world entirely!”

He laughed, and settled down into that spirit of scorn, wrapped in which he stepped later into the great hall of Taunton Castle to take his trial.  With him went Pitt and the yeoman Baynes.  The three of them were to be tried together, and their case was to open the proceedings of that ghastly day.

The hall, even to the galleries — thronged with spectators, most of whom were ladies — was hung in scarlet; a pleasant conceit, this, of the Lord Chief Justice’s, who naturally enough preferred the colour that should reflect his own bloody mind.

At the upper end, on a raised dais, sat the Lords Commissioners, the five judges in their scarlet robes and heavy dark periwigs, Baron Jeffreys of Wem enthroned in the middle place.

The prisoners filed in under guard.  The crier called for silence under pain of imprisonment, and as the hum of voices gradually became hushed, Mr. Blood considered with interest the twelve good men and true that composed the jury.  Neither good nor true did they look.  They were scared, uneasy, and hangdog as any set of thieves caught with their hands in the pockets of their neighbours.  They were twelve shaken men, each of whom stood between the sword of the Lord Chief Justice’s recent bloodthirsty charge and the wall of his own conscience.

From them Mr. Blood’s calm, deliberate glance passed on to consider the Lords Commissioners, and particularly the presiding Judge, that Lord Jeffreys, whose terrible fame had come ahead of him from Dorchester.