ay, and there
were deep lines round the mouth and temples, betraying how the long
anxiety was telling on him, and rendering him suspicious and querulous.
"Soh! Richard Talbot," was his salutation, "what's the coil now? Can
a man never be left in peace in his own house, between queens and
ladies, plots and follies, but his own kinsfolk and retainers must come
to him on every petty broil among the lads! I should have thought your
boy and young Babington might fight out their quarrels alone without
vexing a man that is near driven distracted as it is."

"I grieve to vex your lordship," said Richard, standing bareheaded,
"but Master Francis thought this scroll worthy of your attention. This
is the manner in which he deciphered it."

"Scrolls, I am sick of scrolls," said the Earl testily. "What! is it
some order for saying mass,--or to get some new Popish image or a skein
of silk? I wear my eyes out reading such as that, and racking my
brains for some hidden meaning!"

And falling on Francis's first attempt at copying, he was scornful of
the whole, and had nearly thrown the matter aside, but when he lit at
last on the sentence about burning the meute and carrying off the
tercel gentle, his brow grew dark indeed, and his inquiries came
thickly one upon the other, both as to Antony Babington and the
huckstering woman.

In the midst, Frank Talbot returned with the tidings that the pricker
Guy Norman was nowhere to be found. He had last been seen by his
comrades about the time that Captain Richard had returned to the
Manor-house. Probably he had taken alarm on seeing him come back at
that unusual hour, and had gone to carry the warning to his supposed
aunt. This last intelligence made the Earl decide on going down at
once to Bridgefield to examine young Babington before there was time to
miss his presence at the lodge, or to hold any communication with him.
Frank caused horses to be brought round, and the Earl rode down with
Richard by a shaded alley in an ordinary cloak and hat.

My Lord's appearance at Bridgefield was a rarer and more awful event
than was my Lady's, and if Mistress Susan had been warned beforehand,
there is no saying how at the head of her men and maids she would have
scrubbed and polished the floors, and brushed the hangings and
cushions. What then were her feelings when the rider, who dismounted
from his little hackney as unpretendingly as did her husband in the
twilight court, proved to have