There he turned to the girl who stood beside him, her dark eyes gleaming in the shadow of her hood. It was a crimson hood and reminded him of the night he first met her in the country lane at Durford. "Good-bye, Mistress Barbara," he said wistfully. A sudden fear awoke in her eyes. "But you will come after us, you will see me again?" she cried quickly. "Assuredly, Mistress Barbara," he answered softly; "if there be pity in Heaven I shall see you again." She looked at him doubtfully, but urged him no more. "God keep you," she said gently. Captain Protheroe watched them disappear in the darkness. But he failed to note a dark figure flit from the shadow of a neighbouring house, and follow them on their way. *CHAPTER XXI* Chief Justice Jeffreys sat alone in his lodging at Wells. The long sitting in court was over. All day he had stormed and bullied, reducing prisoners and advocates alike, and even his brothers on the bench, to a state of terrified submission. He had poured forth abuse on the heads of timorous witnesses, cracked his jests and thundered his threats at the miserable victims of the law’s severity. He had sworn, wrangled, and blustered, and now he was alone. The wearying journey, the tedious days of work, the long nights of carouse, above all the unrestrained passions in which he daily indulged had conduced to the inevitable result; on his arrival in Wells his malady had become greatly aggravated, and his physicians had urged on him the absolute necessity of quiet and abstinence. Accordingly to-night he followed their advice; the officers and other jovial gentlemen who formed his escort feasted apart, and, sick in body, weary in mind, he sat alone. And as he sat there in all the luxury of his surroundings, despite his high position, despite his success, despite his wealth, power, and influence, ’twould have been hard to find in all the length and breadth of the kingdom a more wretched man than George Jeffreys, lord chief justice of England, lord chancellor elect. For the man was cursed with a double curse, and the burden of his life seemed at times too heavy to be borne. Cursed with an ambition which would not let him rest, which ever urged him to new struggles, new extravagances, new ventures, and contrariwise cursed with a sensitiveness, a cowardice that made each step in the path of his career an added terror to his brain, each rough encounter a fresh misery, each rebuff a stinging agony.