“What means this?” he asked; “you look as if you had seen a corpse-light.” “There be tidings from London,” Lady Crabtree answered; “Lord Raby hath gone to the Tower accused of high treason.” Amazement tied Sir William’s tongue; he seated himself opposite his cousin and waited for an explanation, his honest face much clouded. Lady Crabtree spread out a letter on her knee and prepared to read the news. “This comes from Mistress Gaynsford, Queen Anne’s maid,” she said, her open hand resting on the long roll of parchment; “she is a gossip, but I doubt not the truth of the matter.” “Let us hear it, Zenobia,” Carew returned impatiently. “She says of the arrest,” began my lady, reading, “‘Lord Raby was taken on a charge, secretly preferred to my lord privy seal, and on examination, a packet was found on his person, filled with treasonable papers, and exposing the network of a huge conspiracy. Many names were on a list therein; whose we know not, but Cromwell and the king’s grace have the papers, and doubtless many tremble in the fear of apprehension. No one knows where the lightning hath struck or who is spared, but ’tis said the gentlemen in the northern counties are many of them singed. The strangest part of the matter is that there runs a story that Raby gave this budget to my lord privy seal himself with every show of innocence, and when it was thought that he did it through an error, having two upon his person, he was searched, but none other was found; and what madness made him give this to Cromwell, no man can devise.’” “’Tis passing strange,” remarked Sir William; “where was my packet?”