Heresy," said the Bailiff, shortly.

"Heresy! dear, dear, to think of it! Well, now, who could have thought
it? But Master Clere's a bit unsteady in that way, his self, ain't he?"

"Oh nay, he's reconciled."

"Oh!" The tone was significant.

"Why, was you wanting yon maid o' Mistress Clere's?" said the porter's
wife. "You'll have her safe enough, for I met Amy Clere this even, and
she said her mother was downright vexed with their Bess, and had turned
the key on her. I did not know it was her you meant. I've never heard
her called nought but Bess, you see."

"Then that's all well," said Maynard. "I'll tarry for her till the
morrow, for I'm well wearied to-night."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

LED TO THE SLAUGHTER.

The long hours of that day wore on, and nobody came again to Elizabeth
in the porch-chamber. The dusk fell, and she heard the sounds of
locking up the house and going to bed, and began to understand that
neither supper nor bed awaited her that night. Elizabeth quietly
cleared a space on the floor in the moonlight, heaping boxes and baskets
on one another, till she had room to lie down, and then, after kneeling
to pray, she slept more peacefully than Queen Mary did in her Palace.
She was awoke suddenly at last. It was broad daylight, and somebody was
rapping at the street door.

"Amy!" she heard Mistress Clere call from her bedchamber, "look out and
see who is there."

Amy slept at the front of the house, in the room next to the
porch-chamber. Elizabeth rose to her feet, giving her garments a shake
down as the only form of dressing just then in her power, and looked out
of the window.

The moment she did so she knew that one of the supreme moments of her
life had come. Before the door stood Mr Maynard, the Bailiff of
Colchester--the man who had marched off the twenty-three prisoners to
London in the previous August. Everybody who knew him knew that he was
a "stout Papist," to whom it was dear delight to bring a Protestant to
punishment. Elizabeth did not doubt for an instant that she was the one
chosen for his next victim.

Just as Amy Clere put her head out of the window. Mr Maynard, who did
not reckon patience among his chief virtues, and who was tired of
waiting, signed to one of his men to give another sharp rap, accompanied
by a shout of--"Open, in the Queen's name!"

"Saints, love us and help us!" ejaculated Amy, taking her head in again.
"Mother, it's the Queen's men!"

"Go dow