m stark."

That both her uncle and her father had lied to her--the one cunningly,
the other stupidly--she had never a doubt, and vaguely uneasy was
Cynthia to learn the truth. Later that day the castle was busy with the
bustle of Joseph's departure, and this again was a matter that puzzled
her.

"Whither do you journey, uncle?" she asked of him as he was in the act
of stepping out to enter the waiting carriage.

"To London, sweet cousin," was his brisk reply. "I am, it seems,
becoming a very vagrant in my old age. Have you commands for me?"

"What is it you look to do in London?"

"There, child, let that be for the present. I will tell you perhaps when
I return. The door, Stephen."

She watched his departure with uneasy eyes and uneasy heart. A fear
pervaded her that in all that had befallen, in all that was befalling
still--what ever it might be--some evil was at work, and an evil that
had Crispin for its scope. She had neither reason nor evidence from
which to draw this inference. It was no more than the instinct whose
voice cries out to us at times a presage of ill, and oftentimes compels
our attention in a degree far higher than any evidence could command.

The fear that was in her urged her to seek what information she could
on every hand, but without success. From none could she cull the merest
scrap of evidence to assist her.

But on the morrow she had information as prodigal as it was
unlooked-for, and from the unlikeliest of sources--her father himself.
Chafing at his inaction and lured into indiscretions by the subsiding of
the pain of his wound, Gregory quitted his bed and came below that
night to sup with his daughter. As his wont had been for years, he drank
freely. That done, alive to the voice of his conscience, and seeking to
drown its loud-tongued cry, he drank more freely still, so that in the
end his henchman, Stephen, was forced to carry him to bed.

This Stephen had grown grey in the service of the Ashburns, and amongst
much valuable knowledge that he had amassed, was a skill in dealing with
wounds and a wide understanding of the ways to go about healing
them. This knowledge made him realize how unwise at such a season was
Gregory's debauch, and sorrowfully did he wag his head over his master's
condition of stupor.

Stephen had grave fears concerning him, and these fears were realized
when upon the morrow Gregory awoke on fire with the fever. They summoned
a leech from Sheringham, and th