r, though I had
already lost so much, and then, since I was so near swooning, giving
me a glass of the Burgundy on the stand. And whilst that was
clouding my brain, since my stomach was fasting, and I had lost so
much blood, entered that woman whom I had espied, and she was not
Mary, but Catherine Cavendish, and there was a gentleman with her
who stood aloof, with his back toward me, gazing out of the window,
and of that I was glad since he screened that flaming sunbeam from
me, and I concerned myself no more about him.

But at Catherine I gazed, and motioned to her to bend over me, and
whispered that the jailor might not hear, what had become of Mary.
Then I saw the jailor had gone out, though I had not seen him go,
and she making a sign to me that the gentleman at the window was not
to be minded, went on to tell me what I thirsted to know; that she
and Mary and Sir Humphrey had escaped that night with ease, and she
and Mary had returned to Drake Hill before midnight, and had not
been molested.

If Mary were suspected she knew not, but Sir Humphrey was then under
arrest and was confined on board a ship in the harbour with Major
Beverly, and his mother was daily sending billets to him to return
home, and blaming him, and not his jailors, for his disobedience.
She told me, furthermore, that it was Cicely Hyde who had led the
militia to our assembly at Laurel Creek that night, and was now in a
low fever through remorse, and though she told me not, I afterward
knew why that mad maid had done such a thing--'twas because of
jealousy of me and Mary Cavendish, and she pulled down more upon her
own head thereby than she wot of.

All this Catherine Cavendish told me in a manner which seemed
strangely foreign to her, being gentle, and yet not so gentle as
subdued, and her fair face was paler than ever, and when I looked at
her and said not a word, and yet had a question in my eyes which she
was at no loss to interpret, tears welled into her own, and she bent
lower and whispered lest even the stranger at the window should
hear, that Mary "sent her dear love, but, but--"

I raised myself with such energy at that that she was startled, and
the gentleman at the window half turned.

"What have they done with her?" I cried. "If they dare--"

"Hush," said Catherine. "Our grandmother hath but locked her in her
chamber, since she hath discovered her love for thee, and frowns
upon it, not since thou art a convict, but since thou ha