Now Jael, during the time that she was gathering the treasure together, had left lights burning in my lady’s room to make people think that Anne Purcell was still alive. She had put new candles to burn the very night she had fled out to her death, and so an eerie thing befell, for officers in quest of papists, and my Lord Gore in particular, broke into the house, having heard the rumor of small-pox and considered that it might be a trick. But they found Anne Purcell lying dead in her bed, a sheet covering her, and the candles burning, not a living soul in the whole house, and every chest and cupboard rifled. So the Law stepped in, beat round for witnesses, and buried my lady at night with a bushel of quick-lime and extra pay to the man who buried her. Then there was a learned to-do, much hunting out of documents, and much puzzling over facts. For Mistress Barbara Purcell was her father’s heiress after her mother’s death, and Mistress Barbara had come within the chancellor’s ken by reason of unsound mind, yet no living soul seemed able to tell where this same Barbara Purcell was. The lawyers looked wise over it, and sat down cheerfully to make their pickings, Chancery claiming authority in the case, and not caring greatly how long the dilemma lasted so long as they handled the property. For every man’s mind was full of the Plot those months, and not for many years had the wigs boasted so much business. Titus Oates had come toward full notoriety in October by harrowing the public with the fulminations of a furious imagination. Then had followed Sir Edmundbury Godfrey’s murder, the seizing of Coleman’s correspondence, and a panic in London, with mobs shouting in the streets. The Protestant beacon had been fired, and blazed with terrified fury, while Oates threw fagot after fagot to feed the flames. Catholic peers were cast into the Tower; two thousand or more smaller people were arrested; all papists commanded to leave London. The train-bands marched through the streets; executions were soon to begin; it was nothing but Plot—Plot—Plot—from Parliament to Pulpit.