Jack looked about him like a trapped animal. He did not know which questions he ought to answer and which he ought to refuse to answer. Confused and terrified by the gaze of so many men and the possession of a secret, aware only that he must keep back his brother's name and hiding-place, the instinct of a drowning man led him to give up all else. After a moment's hesitation he muttered: "His wife," pointing to Simon, "went out in the middle of the night. She left the door open, and the man came in." "Very good," Cromwell answered. "That is clear and explicit. And now, my man," he continued, turning suddenly upon Simon, who stood silent and confounded, "what do you say? More seems to go on in your house than you wot of. Let the woman stand out." Gridley the butler, sitting doubled up on the meal chest, where his brothers figure sheltered him, almost fell forward with terror. He saw his crime on the point of being discovered, and all his craven soul was in alarm. Were attention once drawn to him, were he once challenged and bade to stand forth, he knew that no power could save him. In the absence of evidence he would infallibly betray himself. The dreadful tremors, the sickening apprehension, which he had felt during the first part of his flight from Pattenhall, when he had the damning evidences of his crime upon him, returned upon him now, and bitterly, most bitterly, did he regret that he had ever given way to temptation. He came near to swooning when he heard the woman called out, for he thought it a hundred chances to one that she would falter, and in a moment weave a rope for his neck. The sweat ran down his face as he strained his ears to catch--he dared not look--the first syllable of accusation. But Mistress Gridley, though she had had scant notice of the occasion, was of a harder kind. Relieved of ghostly fears, her mind quickly regained its balance, and instinctively took refuge in the falseness which had become second nature. Her shrewdish face wore a flush as she came forward, and there was a flicker of secret fear in her eye. But the tone in which she denied that she had ever left her house on the night in question was even and composed, and "As for a man," she added scornfully, "what man is there within three miles of us?" "The man who taught this lad to spy!" Cromwell retorted, swiftly and severely. "That man, woman! Do you know him?" She could say No to that with a good conscience, and she did so. Cromwell signed to her stand back. "Very well," he said, "then the boy shall tell us." He turned to Jack, and after glaring at him for a moment, cried in a loud voice: "Hark ye, sirrah! who gave you this cross? What is his name, and where is he?"