t the packet aside, and then lifted the paper to read it.

* * * * *

When he had finished, he sat quite still. The room looked to him misty
and unreal; the paper crackled in his shaking fingers, and a drop of
sweat ran suddenly into the corner of his dry lips. Then he read the
paper again. It ran as follows:

"It is all found out, we think. I find myself watched at every point,
and I can get no speech with B. I cannot go forth from the house without
a fellow to follow me, and two of my friends have found the same. Mr.
G., too, hath been with Mr. W. this three hours back. By chance I saw
him come in, and he has not yet left again. Mr. Ch. is watching for me
while I write this, and will see that this letter is bestowed on a
trusty man who will bring it to your inn, and, with it, another letter
to bid our party save themselves while they can. I do not know how we
shall fare, but we shall meet at a point that is fixed, and after that
evade or die together. You were right, you see. Mr. G. has acted the
traitor throughout, with Mr. W.'s connivance and assistance. I beg of
you, then, to carry this letter, which I send in this, to Her for whom
we have forfeited our lives, or, at least, our country; or, if you
cannot take it with safety, master the contents of it by note and
deliver it to her with your own mouth. She has been taken back to C.
again, whither you must go, and all her effects searched."

There was no signature, but there followed a dash of the pen, and then a
scrawled "A.B.," as if an interruption had come, or as if the man who
was with the writer would wait no longer.

* * * * *

A third time Robin read it through. It was terribly easy of
interpretation. "B." was Ballard; "G." was Gifford; "W." was Walsingham;
"Ch." was Charnoc; "Her" was Mary Stuart; "C." was Chartley. It fitted
and made sense like a child's puzzle. And, if the faintest doubt could
remain in the most incredulous mind as to the horrible reality of it
all, there was the piled luggage downstairs, that would never be "sent
for" (and never, indeed, needed again by its owners in this world).

Then he took up the second sealed packet, and held it unbroken, while
his mind flew like a bird, and in less than a minute he decided, and
opened it.

It was a piteous letter, signed again merely "A.B.," and might have been
written by any broken-hearted reverent lover to his beloved. It spoke a