"And what might you be
wanting here, Master Anthony Norris?"

Anthony explained that he often came up in the evening, and that he
wanted nothing. The magistrate eyed him a moment or two.

"Well, I have nothing against you, young gentleman. But I cannot let you
go, till I am safely set out. You might rouse the village. Take him out
till we start," he added to the man who guarded him.

"Come this way, sir," said the officer; and Anthony presently found
himself sitting on the long oak bench that ran across the western end of
the hall, at the foot of the stairs, and just opposite the door of Sir
Nicholas' room where he had just witnessed that curious startling scene.

The man who had charge of him stood a little distance off, and did not
trouble him further, and Anthony watched in silence.

The hall was still dark, except for one candle that had been lighted by
the magistrate's party, and it looked sombre and suggestive of tragedy.
Floor walls and ceiling were all dark oak, and the corners were full of
shadows. A streak of light came out of the slightly opened door opposite,
and a murmur of voices. The rest of the house was quiet; it had all been
arranged and carried out without disturbance.

Anthony had a very fair idea of what was going forward; he knew of course
that the Catholics were always under suspicion, and now understood
plainly enough from the conversation he had heard that the reddish-haired
young man, standing so alert and cheerful by the table in there, had
somehow precipitated matters. Anthony himself had come up on some
trifling errand, and had run straight into this affair; and now he sat
and wondered resentfully, with his eyes and ears wide open.

There were men at all the inner doors now; they had slipped in from the
outer entrances as soon as word had reached them that the prisoners were
secured, and only a couple were left outside to prevent the alarm being
raised in the village. These inner sentinels stood motionless at the foot
of the stairs that rose up into the unlighted lobby overhead, at the door
that led to the inner hall and the servants' quarters, and at those that
led to the cloister wing and the garden respectively.

The murmur of voices went on in the room opposite; and presently a man
slipped out and passed through the sentinels to the door leading to the
kitchens and pantry; he carried a pike in his hand, and was armed with a
steel cap and breast-piece. In a minute he had returned f