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MY LADY'S BIDDING.
Scribbled in sore haste, by a very tremulous little hand, with a pencil, on the flyleaf of some book, my darling's message is still difficult to read; it was doubly so in the moonlight, five-and-forty autumns ago.

My eyesight, however, was then perhaps the soundest thing about me, and in a little I had deciphered enough to guess correctly (as it proved) at the whole:-- "You say you heard everything just now, and there is no time for further explanations.

I am in the hands of villains, but not ill-treated, though they are one as bad as the other.

You will not find it easy to rescue me.