for him,” said poor Tony to himself, as he sat in prison, loaded with chains, and waiting for his trial. “I wish I had drunk the milk myself. This is what comes of loyalty. But I don’t care, my name is Tony, and his is not, and I will say so too, if I hang for it.”
Acting on this resolution next day, at his trial, Tony said so, and what is more, he came very near indeed to hanging for it. For King Anthony XXIII. was furious. He absolutely danced with rage, and it took six Prime Ministers to restrain his emotion while the trial went on. Tony was tried for an attempt to murder the King. The whole thing, said the Public Persecutor, was nothing but a plot. The prophecy of Henry Birkbeck, which nobody had seen, till Tony found it; the Blue Mountain, which nobody but Tony had seen at all; the thick milk so mysteriously obtained, all pointed to dark treason and villainy. The crack in the mug was a peculiarly incriminating circumstance. (I cannot help the long words—Public Persecutors will use them.) It was a vile plot, the Persecutor said, but it had failed. The Public Analyst gave evidence that the milk was not milk at all, but some explosive substance too dangerous to analyse.
