“My Lord Raby, my heart inclines to believe you; I have ever held a good opinion of your family,” Cromwell rejoined, “but the nature of this charge doth not allow it to be overlooked. But ye shall have an ample hearing. Sir, there is a strange house here upon the Thames, I think you know it,--I see you do,--the house of the wizard, Zachary Sanders. You were there one night this winter, and upon what business?” Raby’s face had changed at the mention of the wizard’s house; the shrieks of Anne Boleyn had a strange trick of haunting him. “I was there indeed,” he said frankly, knowing no harm could come now of the truth, “with Queen Anne and her ladies. It was an unhappy whim of the queen’s, and the wizard caused her to see so evil a vision that I was near seizing him as a traitor; would, indeed, have delivered him to the guard but for her grace, who would not have the matter known, fearing the king’s displeasure at her folly.” Cromwell’s face clouded at the mention of Anne. He had seen her die, sent to perform that duty by the king, and the man who had been faithful to Wolsey, in the misery of Esher house, was not without compassion. “What was the queen’s vision?” he asked moodily. “She saw her life, and her death upon the block,” Simon replied; “and the poor lady was thrown into such terror that she would by no means be quieted, and for hours her shrieks were heard at Greenwich. By Saint Thomas! they ring yet in my ears.” Cromwell was silent for a while; evidently the frankness and sincerity of Raby, together with his previous knowledge of him, made it difficult to reconcile the man with the accusation. “I will be frank with you, sir,” my lord privy seal said, at last; “I make no effort to conceal the perils of this realm, you know them. My Lady Mary Tudor, by her stiff-necked attitude toward the king’s grace and the Act of Succession, hath made herself a stumbling-block, and a point round which the malcontents may gather. Then there are the papists, ever stirring in the cause of the Bishop of Rome, and with these the country gentlemen, who detest the breaking up of the monasteries and the abbeys, with no profit to themselves, and the travelling friars, and, God wot, I know not who, to stir up mischief which would bring us swift to civil war. At such times, my Lord Raby, I may not be lenient. The charge against you is so grave that I would have you make a clean breast of the matter. You came to town this morning from Deptford; what was your errand?” Raby thought at the instant of Sir William’s packet and put his hand in his doublet and drew it out. “My lord, I came to attend to some matters of my own, of a petty nature, but mainly to attend the king’s grace and also to give you these papers.”