“Well, I think ye might make the old gal an allowance till she marries again.”

“Oh, Ned!  Ned!” cried the poor woman.  “I’ll have no man after thee.”  And a violent burst of grief followed.

“Thou’ll do like the rest,” said the dying man.  “Hold thy bellering, and let me speak, that’s got no time to lose.  How much will ye allow her, old lad?”

“Six shillings a week, Ned.”

“And what is to come of young ’un?”

“We’ll apprentice him.”

“To my trade?”

“You know better than that, Ned.  You are a freeman; but he won’t be a freeman’s son by our law, thou knowst.  But there’s plenty of outside trades in Hillsbro’.  We’ll bind him to one of those, and keep an eye on him, for thy sake.”

“Well, I must take what I can get.”

“And little enough too,” said Eliza Watney.  “Now do you know that they have set upon Mr. Little and beaten him within an inch of his life?  Oh, Ned, you can’t approve that, and him our best friend.”

“Who says I approve it, thou fool?”

“Then tell the gentleman who the villain was; for I believe you know.”

“I’ll tell ’em summut about it.”

Grotait turned pale; but still kept his glittering eye fixed on the sick man.

“The job was offered to me; but I wouldn’t be in it.  I know that much.  Says I, ‘He has had his squeak.’”

“Who offered you the job?” asked Mr. Holdfast.  And at this moment Ransome came in.

“What, another black coat!” said Simmons. “——­, if you are not like so many crows over a dead horse.”  He then began to wander, and Holdfast’s question remained unanswered.

This aberration continued so long, and accompanied with such interruptions of the breathing, that both Holdfast and Ransome despaired of ever hearing another rational word from the man’s lips.

They lingered on, however, and still Grotait sat at the foot of the bed, with his glittering eye fixed on the dying man.

Presently Simmons became silent, and reflected.

“Who offered me the job to do Little?” said he, in a clear rational voice.

“Yes,” said Mr. Holdfast.  “And who paid you to blow up the forge?” Simmons made no reply.  His fast fleeting powers appeared unable now to hold an idea for above a second or two.

Yet, after another short interval, he seemed to go back a second time to the subject as intelligibly as ever.

“Master Editor!” said he, with a sort of start.

“Yes.”  And Holdfast stepped close to his bedside.

“Can you keep a secret?”

Grotait started up.

“Yes!” said Holdfast, eagerly.

“Then so can I.”

These were the last words of Ned Simmons.  He died, false to himself, but true to his fellows, and faithful to a terrible confederacy, which, in England and the nineteenth century, was Venice and the middle ages over again.