sound of a horse breaking into a gallop and presently dying away
westwards beyond Perry Lane.

II

Within the castle that evening nothing happened that was of any note to
its more careless occupants. All was as usual.

The guard at the towers that controlled the drawbridge across the outer
moat was changed at four o'clock; six men came out, under an officer,
from the inner court; the words were exchanged, and the six that went
off duty marched into the armoury to lay by their pikes and presently
dispersed, four to their rooms in the east side of the quadrangle, two
to their quarters in the village. From the kitchen came the clash of
dishes. Sir Amyas came out from the direction of the keep, where he had
been conferring with Mr. FitzWilliam, the castellan, and passed across
to his lodging on the south. A butcher hurried in, under escort of a
couple of men from the gate, with a covered basket and disappeared into
the kitchen entry. All these things were observed idly by the dozen
guards who stood two at each of the five doors that gave upon the
courtyard. Presently, too, hardly ten minutes after the guard was
changed, three figures came out at the staircase foot where Sir Amyas
had just gone in, and stood there apparently talking in low voices. Then
one of them, Mr. Melville, the Queen's steward, came across the court
with Mr. Bourgoign towards the outer entrance, passed under it, and
presently Mr. Bourgoign came back and wheeled sharply in to the right by
the entry that led up to the Queen's lodging. Meanwhile the third
figure, whom one of the men had thought to be M. de Preau, had gone back
again towards Mr. Melville's rooms.

That was all that was to be seen, until half an hour later, a few
minutes before the drawbridge was raised for the night, the steward came
back, crossed the court once more and vanished into the entry opposite.

It was about this time that the young man had ridden out from the New
Inn.

Then the sun went down; the flambeaux were lighted beneath the two great
entrances--in the towered archway across the moat, and the smaller
vaulted archway within, as well as one more flambeau stuck into the iron
ring by each of the four more court-doors, and lights began to burn in
the windows round about. The man at Sir Amyas' staircase looked across
the court and idly wondered what was passing in the rooms opposite on
the first floor where the Queen was lodged. He had heard that the priest
had been for