e Lady Katharine Howard.'

The old knight raised his hands above his head--but Cicely Elliott
turned her back to the fire.

'What would you with me?' she asked. Her face was all in shadows.

'I have a warrant to take the Lady Katharine.'

Cicely Elliott screamed out:

'Me! Me! Ah God! ah God!'

She shrank back; she waved her hands, then suddenly she caught at the
coif above her head and pulled forward the tail of her hood till, like
a veil, it covered her face.

'Let me not be seen!' she uttered hoarsely.

The old knight's impatient desires burst through his terror.

'Nick Throckmorton,' he bleated, 'yon mad wench of mine....'

But the large man cut in on his words with a harsh and peremptory
vehemence.

'It is very dark. You cannot see who I be. Thank your God I cannot see
whether you be a man who fought by a hedge or no. There shall be
reports written of this. Hold your peace.'

Nevertheless the old man made a spluttering noise of one about to
speak.

'Hold your peace,' Throckmorton said roughly, again, 'I cannot see
your face. Can you walk, madam, and very fast?'

He caught her roughly by the wrist and they passed out, twin blots of
darkness, at the doorway. The clank of the pike-staves sounded on the
boards without, and old Rochford was tearing at his white hairs in the
little light from the fire.

Katharine Howard ran swiftly from the shadow of the fireplace.

'Give me time, till they have passed the stairhead,' she whispered.
'For pity! for pity.'

'For pity,' he muttered. 'This is to stake one's last years upon
woman.' He turned upon her, and his white face and pale blue eyes
glinted at her hatefully.

'What pity had Cicely Elliott upon me then?'

'Till they are out of the gate,' she pleaded, 'that I may get me
gone.'

At her back she was cut off from the night and the rain by a black
range of corridors. She had never been through them because they led
to rooms of men that she did not know. But, down the passage and down
the stairway was the only exit to the rest of the palace and the air.
She threw open her press so that the hinges cracked. She caught her
cloak and she caught her hood. She had nowhither to run--but there she
was at the end of a large trap. Their footsteps as they receded echoed
and whispered up the stairway from below.

'For pity!' she pleaded. 'For pity! I will go miles away before it is
morning.'

He had been wavering on his feet, torn backwards and forwards
lite