No need to ask what tidings. Winter is the first to throw himself from his steaming horse, and followed by Percy, the two Wrights and Robert Keyes, staggers into the room. They are covered with mud and streaming with perspiration. Their hats and swords were left behind--evidently lost in the wild ride from London. Breathless they stand, for a moment unable to speak. Written on the face of each is an expression of utter despair, mingled with fear and pain, such a look as an animal wears when, shot through the body, it blindly flees from death. Winter is the first to find voice; and clutching at the table, which shakes under his trembling grasp, pants, in a tone which is scarcely audible: "Flee for your lives! There is yet time for us to escape. We cannot help him who is in the Tower. Our own necks will pay for further delay." There is a horrified silence, broken only by the hard breathing of the men. At last Rookwood, pale with emotion, sprang toward the speaker, gasping: "What is this thou sayest? Failure! It cannot be! Thou must be mad!" "Nay," cried Percy, "'tis so, 'tis so, indeed. Fawkes is captured. Nothing is left for us but flight. Come, to horse! to horse! I say. Even now the soldiers are on the road, and any moment the sound of hurrying hoofs in pursuit of us may fall upon our ears." In an instant the utmost disorder reigned. Chairs were overturned in the eagerness of the men to take in hand their swords, which rested against the wall. Glasses, swept from off the board, fell with a crash, adding to the general din. The floor was strewn with eatables and wine, carried from off the table in the mad rush. Panic ruled, and it had placed its sign-manual upon each face. At last, above the uproar, the voice of Catesby can be heard, and standing by the door he addresses the fear-stricken men. "Gentlemen!" he cried, "has the grasp of terror seized upon and turned you all mad? Why should we fly, and by that course brand our deeds as sinful? Are we criminals? Have we stolen aught? Are we creatures to be hunted through the country? Come! play the part God has given to each, and at the end, since success is not ours let us meet death here, hand in hand, as becomes brothers in one faith--like martyrs!" The words of the speaker had small effect upon the men, and did not check the general confusion. Those who had just arrived were in the garden attending to their jaded steeds, knowing full well that upon them depended their lives. Rookwood burst again into the room, attired in a heavy riding mantle. "Come," he cried to his host; "to horse while there is time! 'Twould be a wickedness to tarry longer; it meaneth naught but self-destruction. Our steeds have been resting, and many miles may be placed between us and London ere break of day. Endanger not all our lives by thy foolish scruples."