Why did he leave his home life tranquil, To seek the envious market place, Where each free flame is suffocated, Expose him to the assassin base?

They were part of that mighty bulwark of blood and iron that stood between law and rebellion, between the nation's heart and the assassin dagger of disunion.

There lay the noble Canby prone upon his face, cold and still in death; having breasted the hurricane of many a well-fought field to fall at last by the treacherous, assassin hand of a prowling savage to whom he had come upon a mission of peace and friendship.

Could it be that he knew the assassin oror was he the assassin?

No shield received the assassin stroke; thou plungest Thy weapon on an unprotected breast Against such weapons I am but a child.

He was engaged to the beautiful sixteen-year-old widow of Lord Ogle, when she had the misfortune to attract the attention of Count Konigsmark, a Polish adventurer, whose hired assassins waylaid and shot Thynne in Pall Mall.

And it is said that even yet occasionally, in the silence and obscurity of the evening, the figure of some assassin worshipper at this accursed shrine may be seen to glide rapidly from the solitary spot, where he has spoken the unhallowed prayer whose mystic might has doomed to death the enemy he hates.