Alas! was it not a very one-sided affair of love? he thought to himself, with a sigh. If for a moment he ventured to hope that Hilary still cared for him, the next he remembered with a pang the way in which she had permitted Norton to dangle about her. He wondered, uneasily, what the Vicar could be dreaming of to allow it. Dr. Coke had seemed a shrewd as well as a generous man, yet had evidently no notion that the Governor of Canon Frome was playing the mischief in his very household. And then he remembered how plausible and fascinating Norton could be, recollected, too, that strange glimpse of a noble nature which he had now and then seen in him, and realised that very probably the Vicar and Hilary only knew the Colonel at his very best. A storm of despair swept over him as more and more plainly he saw the great danger which threatened her. “’Tis enough to madden a man!” he said to himself, writhing at the sense of his powerlessness to help. “It may be months or years ere I see her again, while all the time Norton can prowl round in his devilish fashion! Yet, if I rave like this, I shall lose all control over myself. After all, she gave me her promise to speak--I know she will keep her promise.” The thought calmed him, and, pausing at the head of the alley, he stood for a minute praying silently in his usual brief, formless, but thoroughly heartfelt way, “God of Justice! grant her Thy help and guidance, and keep us from all evil this night.” The wind blew softly down the narrow alley, the dark spire pointed silently towards heaven, and in the stillness the soul of the Puritan grew once more strong and undaunted. As he paced back again to the High street he did not notice the dark figure standing in the shade of a doorway, but in the manner of one well used to bivouacking for the night he laid his sword on the ground, put his helmet and gorget in place of a pillow, and, with his military cloak wrapped about him, was soon sleeping soundly in one of the shallow recesses betwixt the wooden posts on which the market-house was raised. At some little distance a sentry paced to and fro; Waghorn, watching his movements with a keen and wary eye, waited patiently in his sheltered nook until he was assured that all the soldiers slept. Then seizing his opportunity as the sentry marched back to the farthest point of his beat, he glided noiselessly out of the shadow, heartening himself with fierce inward ejaculations. “Let destruction come upon him at unawares! I dread that sentinel. But courage! I will remember Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite, and my part is not to slay, merely to filch!” Crouching down beside Gabriel he saw that he slept profoundly. In the cold clear moonlight it was easy to trace marks of care and suffering in the face, and, as the fanatic stealthily unbuttoned the coat, he reflected with grim satisfaction that worse would be in store for the sleeper when he woke.