art, so near, for
the consolation which a priest only could give, and that he, a priest,
was free to go through all England, except through that towered gateway
past which he walked every day--this increased his misery and his
longing.

The very day he had been through--the Sunday on which he could neither
say nor even hear mass (for, because of the greatness of that which was
at stake, he had thought it wiser to bring with him nothing that could
arouse suspicion)--and the hearing of the bells from the church calling
to Protestant prayers, and the sight of the crowds going and
returning--this brought him lower than he had been since his first
coming to England. He lay then in the darkness, turning from side to
side, thinking of these things, listening to the breathing of the young
man who lay on blankets at the foot of his bed.

About midnight he could lie there no longer. He got out of bed
noiselessly, stepped across the other, went to the window-seat and sat
down there, staring out, with eyes well accustomed to the darkness,
towards the vast outline against the sky which he knew was the keep of
the castle. No light burned there to relieve its brutality. It remained
there, implacable as English justice, immovable as the heart of
Elizabeth and the composure of the gaoler who kept it.... Then he
drew out Mr. Maine's rosary and began to recite the "Sorrowful
Mysteries."...

He supposed afterwards that he had begun to doze; but he started,
wide-awake, at a sudden glare of light in his eyes, as if a beacon had
flared for an instant somewhere within the castle enclosure. It was gone
again, however; there remained the steady monstrous mass of building and
the heavy sky. Then, as he watched, it came again, without warning and
without sound--that same brilliant flare of light, against which the
towers and walls stood out pitch-black. A third time it came, and all
was dark once more.

* * * * *

In the morning, as he sat over his ale in the tavern below, he listened,
without lifting his eyes, engrossed, it seemed, in a little book he was
reading, to the excited talk of a group of soldiers. One of them, he
said, had been on guard beneath the Queen's windows last night, and
between midnight and one o'clock had seen three times a brilliant light
explode itself, like soundless gunpowder, immediately over the room
where she slept. And this he asserted, over and over again.

IV

On the follow