! I'm coming in
a wink.--Well, but you do look cheery and peaceful! I would I could ha'
tarried a bit. Mrs Lettice, my dear, you take warning by me, and don't
you marry a man as gives you no liberty. Stand up for your rights, my
dear, and get 'em--that's what I say. Good even! There's no end to the
imperence of lads, and no more to the masterfulness of men. Don't you
have nought to do with 'em! Good-night."

"I could not have stood it another minute!" said Aubrey as soon as she
was out of hearing, while he and Lettice made the walls echo.

On a calm June evening, three men met at a house in Thames Street, where
Garnet lodged. They were Robert Catesby, the Reverend Oswald Greenway,
and the Reverend Henry Garnet. They met to consult and decide on the
last uncertainties, and as it were to finish off the scheme of the plot.
The conclusions ended, Garnet let out his friends, who with hats drawn
low down, and faces muffled in their cloaks, glided softly and darkly
away.

As the month of August ran out, the conspirators gradually returned to
London, with some exceptions, who joined their ghostly father, Garnet,
in a pious pilgrimage to Saint Winifred's Well, better known as
Holywell, in Flintshire. The party numbered about thirty, and comprised
Lady Digby, two daughters of Lord Vaux, Rookwood, and his wife. Thomas
Winter wrote to Grant that "friends" would reach Norbrook on the second
or third of September, begging him to "void his house of Morgan and his
she-mate," as otherwise it "would hardly bear all the company." The
route taken was from Goathurst, the home and inheritance of Lady Digby,
by Daventry, Norbrook, the residence of Grant, Huddington, the house of
Robert Winter, and Shrewsbury, to Holt, in Flintshire. In some uneasy
nightmare during that pilgrimage, did a faint prescience of that which
was to come ever flit before the eyes of Ambrose Rookwood, as to the
circumstances wherein he should journey that road again? From Holt the
ladies walked barefoot to the "holy well," which, according to
tradition, had sprung up on the place where Saint Winifred's head had
rolled on being cut off: they remained at the well for the night. They
returned the same way, mass being said by Garnet at Huddington and
Norbrook. It is difficult to believe that those who went on this
pilgrimage could be wholly innocent of "intention" respecting the plot
so soon to be executed.

Fawkes arrived from abroad on the first of S