people, Sir Amyas' lodgings, and the space occupied by Mary's own
servants--all these filled the castle entirely. For the rest--the
garrison not on duty, the grooms, the couriers, the lesser servants, the
suites of the visitors, and even many of the visitors themselves--these
filled the two inns of the little town completely, and overflowed
everywhere into the houses of the people. It was a vision of a garrison
in war-time that the countryfolk gaped at continually; the street
sparkled all day with liveries and arms; archers went to and fro; the
trample of horses, the sharp military orders at the changings of guard
outside and within the towered gateway that commanded the entrance over
the moats, the songs of men over their wine in the tavern-parlours--
these things had become matters of common observation, and fired many a
young farm-man with a zeal for arms.

The Queen herself was a mystery.

They had seen, for a moment, as she drove in after dark last September,
a coach (in which, it was said, she had sat with her back to the horses)
surrounded by guards; patient watchers had, perhaps, half a dozen times
altogether caught a glimpse of a woman's face, at a window that was
supposed to be hers, look out for an instant over the wall that skirted
the moat. But that was all. They heard the trumpets' cry within the
castle; and even learned to distinguish something of what each
signified--the call for the changing of guards, the announcement of
dinner and supper; the warning to the gatekeepers that persons were to
pass out. But of her, round whom all this centred, of the prison-queen
of this hive of angry bees, they knew less than of her Grace of England
whom once they had seen ride in through these very gates. Tales, of
course, were abundant--gossip from servant to servant, filtering down at
last, distorted or attenuated, to the rustics who watched and exclaimed;
but there was not a soldier who kept her, not a cook who served her, of
whom they did not know more than of herself. There were even parties in
the village; or, rather, there was a silent group who did not join in
the universal disapproval, but these were queer and fantastic persons,
who still held to the old ways and would not go to church with the rest.

A little more material had been supplied for conversation by the events
of to-day. It had positively been reported, by a fellow who had been to
see about a room for himself in the village, that he had been turne