“Indeed!” She was terribly derisive now. “And maybe you’ve never heard the names of his lieutenants neither--of Tucker and of Rathbone, that was in here with you no later than yesterday as I can swear. And what was they doing with you? What had you to do with them? That’s what you can perhaps explain to the satisfaction of the Justices. They’ll want to know how you came to be so close with they two traitors that was arrested this morning, along of a dozen others, for conspiring to bring back the Commonwealth. Oh, a scoundrelly plot--to murder the King, seize the Tower, and burn the City, no less.” It was like a blow between the eyes. “Arrested!” he gasped, his jaw fallen, his eyes startled. “Tucker and Rathbone arrested, do you say? Woman, you rave!” But in his heart already he knew that she did not. For unless her tale were true how could she have come by her knowledge of their conspiring. “Do I?” She laughed again, evilly mocking. “Step out into Paul’s Yard, and ask the first man you meet of the arrest made in Cheapside just afore noon, and of the hunt that is going on this minute for Danvers, their leader, and for others who was mixed up in this wicked plot. And I don’t want them to come a-hunting here. I don’t want my house named for a meeting-place of traitors, as you’ve made it, taking advantage of me that haven’t a man to protect me, and all the while deceiving me with your smooth pleasantness. If it wasn’t for that, I’d inform the Justices myself at once. You may be thankful that I want to keep the good name of my house, if I can. And that’s the only reason for my silence. But you’ll go to-day or maybe I’ll think better of it yet.” She picked up the empty tankard, and reached the door before he could find words in his numbed brain to answer her. On the threshold she paused. “I’ll bring you your score presently,” she said. “When you’ve settled that, you may pack and quit.” She went out, slamming the door. The score! It was a small thing compared with that terrible menace of gaol and gallows. It mattered little that--save in intent--he was still completely innocent of any complicity in the rash republican plot which had been discovered. Let him be denounced for association with Tucker and Rathbone, and there would be no mercy for the son of Randal Holles the Regicide. His parentage and antecedents would supply the crowning evidence against him. That was plain to him. And yet the score, whilst a comparatively negligible evil, was the more immediate, and therefore gave him at the moment the greater preoccupation. He knew that it would be heavy, and he knew that the balance of his resources was utterly inadequate to meet it. Yet unless it were met he could be assured that Mrs. Quinn would show him no mercy; and this fresh trick of Fate’s, in bringing him into association with Tucker on the very eve of that conspirator’s arrest, placed him in the power of Mrs. Quinn to an extent that did not bear considering.