The next night Father Sholto, who was lodged in Lord Fordingbridge's house, took a hackney coach through the fields to Chelsea Church, and so was ferried across to Battersea. Then, because the evening was soft and mild and there was a young moon, he decided to walk on by the road to the next village, namely Wandsworth, which lay half an hour further on. "Poor Kitty," he thought to himself, as he felt the packet she had confided to him press against his breast, "poor Kitty! Why could she not have believed in Bertie's truth? Surely anything might have been set against the word of such a creature as Simeon Larpent, pupil of mine though he be. _Peste!_ why was not I in Paris when all was happening? By now they would have been happy. They could have lived in France or Italy. We, the Society," and he crossed himself as he went on, "would have found the wherewithal; or even in America they might have, perhaps, been safe. Yet now! Now! Elphinston is a heartbroken man; Kitty, a heartbroken woman. Alas! alas!" With meditations such as these, for political Scotch Jesuit as Archibald Sholto was, and fierce partisan of his countrymen, Charles Stuart and his father James, there beat a kindly heart within him, he reached the long, straggling village street of Wandsworth. Then, turning off somewhat sharply to the right, he emerged after another five minutes upon a road above the strand of the river, on which, set back in shady gardens, in which grew firs, cedars, and chestnut trees, were some antique and picturesque houses built a hundred years before. At one of these, the first he came to, he knocked three times on the garden gate and rang a bell, the handle of which was set high in the door frame; and then in a moment a strong, heavy tread was heard coming from the house to the gate. "Who is it?" a man's voice asked from within. "_Nunquam triumphans_,"[1] was the priest's answer, softly given, and as he spoke the postern door was opened, and a tall man stood before Sholto. In a moment their hands were clasped in each other's and their greetings exchanged. "'Tis good of you, Archie, to come again to-night," his younger brother said to him; "have you brought more news? How fares it with those in the Tower?" "Ill," replied the other. "As ill as may be. The trials are fixed, 'tis said, for July at latest. One will, however, escape. Tullibardine----" "The Marquis of Tullibardine escape! Why, then, there is hope for the others!" "Ay!" replied the elder brother, "there is, by the same way. Tullibardine is dying in the Tower. His life draws to a close." "Pish! What use such an escape? But come in, Archie. Bertie looks ever for you." Then he stopped on the gravel path and, gazing into the other's face as it shone in the moonlight, he said, "What of Kitty? Have you told her he is in London?"