John Gore gave his horse the spur suddenly, and took Mr. Pepys into Battle at a canter, the Secretary bumping fiercely in the saddle, much to the delight of certain rude children who watched them come riding into the town. But at Thorn, Barbara, cold and very quiet, sat on the bed under the window, with the red book in her lap and her eyes full of vague musings. For though those four walls let life in only by the window overhead, her thoughts flew out into the wide world—sad and poignant thoughts that bled at the bosom like a bird that has been wounded by a bolt. She had heard strangers come and go, and with them the echo of a voice that made her heart hurry and her white face flush, and her eyes grow full of desire and mystery. It had seemed but an echo to her from far away, no dear reality—yet there had been tears upon the page when she read the book that morning. For many things had changed in Barbara’s heart that autumn, with the cold and the loneliness, the wretched food, and the wind in the tower at night. She had grown gentler, more wistful, less sure of her own soul. It was as though suffering were softening her, even ripening the heart in her, despite the raw nights and the shivering dawns. What the future had in store she could not tell, but she fed the birds at the window, and the mouse that now crept out to her in the daytime and not only when dusk fell. And with these childish things some new impulse seemed to quicken and take fire within her, like the life of a child that is reborn in those who suffer. XXIX Mr. Pepys looked very glum when John Gore told him over their wine that he could go no farther into the county of Sussex. The business between my Lord Montague and the Secretary to the Admiralty had been thrashed out confidentially in my lord’s private parlor in the Abbey the day after the adventurous return from Thorn. Mr. Pepys was ready for the Portsmouth road, and could not or would not be brought to understand for the moment John Gore’s humor in deserting him thus suddenly. The sea-captain would only hint at a reason, and Mr. Pepys’s curiosity was piqued to the extreme limit of good temper. He even suggested rather pointedly that Mistress Green Stays might be to blame, but John Gore looked so grim at the innuendo that Mr. Pepys pushed his pleasantries no further. “Well, John,” he said, at last, like a man of sense, “let each dog follow his own nose. I gather that you have affairs that need careful watching, and a friend should be able to respect a friend’s privacy. If you have any winks to give me, John, let me have them that I may not blab anything that will rouse your wrath.” He was such a shrewd good soul that John Gore felt tempted to tell him everything, but refrained, from a sense of sacredness and pride.