d out
of the castle to make space for her Grace's chaplain. This was puzzling.
Had not the Popish priest already been in the castle five or six weeks?
Then why should he now require another chamber?

The argument waxed hot by the bridge. One said that it was another
priest that was come in disguise; another, that once a Popish priest got
a foothold in a place he was never content till he got the whole for
himself; a third, that the fellow had simply lied, and that he was
turned out because he had been caught by Sir Amyas making love to one of
the maids. Each was positive of his own thesis, and argued for it by the
process of re-assertion that it was so, and that his opponents were
fools. They spat into the water; one got out a tobacco pipe that a
soldier had given him and made a great show of filling it, though he had
no flint to light it with; another proclaimed that for two figs he would
go and inquire at the gateway itself....

To this barren war of the schools came a fact at last, and its bearer
was a gorgeous figure of a man-at-arms (who, later, got into trouble by
talking too much), who came swaggering down the road from the New Inn,
blowing smoke into the air, with his hat on one side, and his
breast-piece loose; and declared in that strange clipped London-English
of his that he had been on guard at the door of Sir Amyas' room, and had
heard him tell Melville the steward and De Preau the priest that they
must no longer have access to her Grace, but must move their lodgings
elsewhere within the castle.

This, then, had to be discussed once more from the beginning. One said
that this was an evident sign that the end was to come and that Madam
was to die; another that, on the contrary, it was plain that this was
not so, but that rather she was to be compelled by greater strictness to
acknowledge her guilt; a third, that it was none of these things, but
rather that Madam was turning Protestant at last in order to save her
life, and had devised this manner of ridding herself of the priest. And
the soldier damned them all round as block-fools, who knew nothing and
talked all the more for it.

* * * * *

The dark was beginning to fall before the group broke up, and none of
them took much notice of a young man on a fresh horse, who rode quietly
out of the yard of the New Inn as the saunterers came up. One of them,
three minutes later, however, heard suddenly from across the bridge the