he would have been at our meeting
to-night.

One conclusion then, immediate and pressing, came out of all this; that
an assault on Whitehall and an attack on the King's person was in urgent
contemplation.

* * * * *

Then, as we went up under the stars, my waterman and I, one of those
moods came upon me which come on all men in such stress as I was; and I
appeared to myself, for the time, to be worlds away from all this
sedition and passion and fever. The little affairs of men which they
thought so great seemed to me in that hour very little and wicked--like
the scheming of naughty children, or the quarrels and spites of efts in
a muddy pond. In that hour my whole heart grew sick at this miserable
murderous pother in the midst of which my duty seemed to lie; and
yearned instead to those things that are great indeed--the love of the
maid who had promised herself to me, and the Love of God that should
make us one. My religion--though I am a little ashamed to confess
it--had been very little to me lately: I had heard mass, indeed,
usually, on Sundays, in one of the privileged chapels, and had confessed
myself at Easter and once since, to one of the Capuchins, and received
Communion; yet, for the rest it had largely been blotted out by these
hot absorbing affairs in which I found myself. But, in that hour (for
the tide was beginning to set against us)--it came back on me like a
breeze in a stifling room. I thought of that cleanly passionless life I
had led as a novice, and of that no less cleanly, though perhaps less
supernatural life, that should one day be mine and Dolly's--and these
politics and these plottings and this listening at doors, and this
elaborate lying--all blew off from me like a cloud.

When we were yet twenty yards from the Privy Stairs a wherry shot past
us, with no light burning. There was but one passenger in it, whom I
knew well enough, though I feigned to see nothing; and once more my
sickness came on me, that it was for a King like this, slipping out on
some shameful pleasure, that I so toiled and endangered myself.

* * * * *

When I had reported all to Mr. Chiffinch, sitting back weary in my
chair, yet knowing that I must go through with the work to which I had
set my hand, he remained silent.

"Well?" I said. "Am I wrong in any point?"

"Why no," he said. "Your information tallies perfectly with all I know,
and has increased