ffling of the
pursuers, but added that Isabel was still a little shaken, and would Mr.
Buxton say a word to her.

"Why, I will take her round the hiding-holes myself after supper, and
show her how strong and safe we are. We will all go round."

In the withdrawing-room he said a word or two of reassurance to her
before the others were down.

"Anthony has told me everything, Mistress Isabel; and I warrant that the
knaves are cursing their stars still on Stanstead hills, twenty miles
from here. You are as safe here as in Greenwich palace. But after supper,
to satisfy you, we will look to our defences. But, believe me, there is
nothing to fear."

He spoke with such confidence and cheerfulness that Isabel felt her fears
melting, and before supper was over she was ashamed of them, and said so.

"Nay, nay," said Mr. Buxton, "you shall not escape. You shall see every
one of them for yourself. Mistress Corbet, do you not think that just?"

"You need a little more honest worldliness, Isabel," said Mary. "I do not
hesitate to say that I believe God saves the priests that have the best
hiding-holes. Now that is not profane, so do not look at me like that."

"It is the plainest sense," said Anthony, smiling at them both.

They went the round of them all with candles, and Anthony refreshed his
memory; they visited the little one in the chapel first, then the
cupboard and portrait-door at the top of the corridor, the chamber over
the fireplace in the hall, and lastly, in the wooden cellar-steps they
lifted the edge of the fifth stair from the bottom, so that its front and
the top of the stair below it turned on a hinge and dropped open, leaving
a black space behind: this was the entrance to the passage that led
beneath the garden to the garden-house on the far side of the avenue.

Mistress Corbet wrinkled her nose at the damp earthy smell that breathed
out of the dark.

"I am glad I am not a priest," she said. "And I would sooner be buried
dead than alive. And there is a rat there that sorely needs burying."

"My dear lady!" cried the contriver of the passage indignantly, "her
Grace might sleep there herself and take no harm. There is not even the
whisker of a rat."

"It is not the whisker that I mind," said Mary, "it is the rest of him."

Mr. Buxton immediately set his taper down and climbed in.

"You shall see," he said, "and I in my best satin too!"

He was inside the stairs now and lying on his back on the smooth b