He had no time to remonstrate, nor thought of remonstrance. “Stand flat against the wall!” he muttered, his fingers closing upon the staff in his pocket. “It is our only chance!” He had basely spoken before the leaders of the mob swept round the elbow. They had one light, a flare borne above them, which shone on their tarpaulins and white smocks, and on the huge ship-hammers they carried. There was a single moment of great peril, and instinctively Vaughan stepped before the older man. He could not have made a happier movement, for it seemed—to the crowd who caught a glimpse of the two and took them for some of their own party—as if he advanced against the gates along with their leaders. The peril indeed, or the worst of it, was over the moment they fell into the ranks. “Hammers to the front!” was the cry. And Sir Robert and Vaughan were thrust back into the second line, that those who wielded the hammers might have room. Vaughan tipped his hat over his face, and the villains who pressed upon the two and jostled them, and whose cries of “Burn him out! Burn the old devil out!” were dictated by greed rather than by hate, were too full of the work in hand to regard their neighbours closely. In three or four minutes—long minutes they seemed to the two inclosed in that unsavoury company—the bars gave way, the gates were thrown open, and Vaughan and Sir Robert, hardly keeping their feet in the rush, were borne into the Cloisters. The rabble, with cries of triumph, raced across the dark court to the Palace door and began to use their hammers on that. Vaughan hoped that the Bishop had had warning—as a fact he had escaped some hours earlier. At any rate he and his companion could do no more, and under cover of the darkness they retreated to the porch of a smaller house which opened on the Cloisters. Here they were safe for the time; and, his heart opened and his tongue loosed by the danger through which they had passed, he turned to his companion and remonstrated with him. “Sir Robert,” he said, “this is no place for a man of your years.” “England will soon be no place for any man of my years,” the Baronet answered bitterly. “I would your leaders, sir, were here to see their work! I would Lord Grey were here to see how well his friends carry out his hints!” “I doubt if he would be more pleased than you or I!” Vaughan answered. “In the meantime——” “The soldiers! Have a care!” The alarm came from the gate by which they had entered, and Vaughan broke off, with an exclamation of joy. “We have them now!” he said. “And red-handed! Brereton has only to close the passage, and he must take them all!”