The Abbot leapt from his horse and ran to him, kneeling at his side. “Dead!” he cried, and began to shrive his passing soul, or so it seemed. “Dead,” repeated Emlyn, “and a gallant death!” “Dead!” wailed Cicely, in so terrible a voice that all below heard it. “Dead, dead!” and sank senseless on Emlyn’s breast. At that moment the rest of the roof fell in, hiding the tower in spouts and veils of flame. Here they might not stay if they would live. Lifting her mistress in her strong arms, as she was wont to do when she was little, Emlyn found the head of the stair, so that when the wind blew the smoke aside for an instant, those below saw that both had vanished, as they thought withered in the fire. “Now you can enter on the Shefton lands, Abbot,” cried a voice from the darkness of the gateway, though in the turmoil none knew who spoke; “but not for all England would I bear that innocent blood!” The Abbot’s face turned ghastly, and though it was hot enough in that courtyard his teeth chattered. “It is on the head of this woman-thief,” he exclaimed with an effort, looking down on Christopher, who lay at his feet. “Take him up, that inquest may be held on him, who died doing murder. Can none enter the house? His pocket full of gold to him who saves the Lady Cicely!” “Can any enter hell and live?” answered the same voice out of the smoke and gloom. “Seek her sweet soul in heaven, if you may come there, Abbot.” Then, with scared faces, they lifted up Christopher and the other dead and wounded and carried them away, leaving Cranwell Towers to burn itself to ashes, for so fierce was the heat that none could bide there longer. Two hours had gone by. The Abbot sat in the little room of a cottage at Cranwell that he had occupied during the siege of the Towers. It was near midnight, yet, weary as he was, he could not rest; indeed, had the night been less foul and dark he would have spent the time in riding back to Blossholme. His heart was ill at ease. Things had gone well with him, it is true. Sir John Foterell was dead--slain by “outlawed men;” Sir Christopher Harflete was dead--did not his body lie in the neat-house yonder? Cicely, daughter of the one and wife to the other, was dead also, burned in the fire at the Towers, so that doubtless the precious gems and the wide lands he coveted would fall into his lap without further trouble. For, Cromwell being bribed, who would try to snatch them from the powerful Abbot of Blossholme, and had he not a title to them--of a sort?