"That will be the best: I will to mine uncle and Philip and tell them that. It will make them hasten away at once; but I will not go with them. If I am suspected I must not be seen with them, nor seem to have dealings with them. If they leave town and I remain, none will suspect that I have warned them and sent them forth. To fly with them would at once raise such thoughts. Here must I remain, and let myself be seen abroad, so will they the better escape Miriam's evil intent. Sir Richard has friends at Court. Lord Andover and others will speak for him if need be. I doubt me much, he being quietly gone, whether any will dare to strive to bring his name into disgrace. There be those to find who are the guilty ones. Sure they may let the innocent go free. As for me, I will not flee. I would fain see the end of this matter. And perchance I might even warn Master Robert Catesby of the peril that hangs over his head. Strange how so gentle and courteous a gentleman can sell himself to a work of such devilish wickedness!" Divided betwixt horror of the deed and pity for the conspirators who had been practically discovered and frustrated in their evil work, and who had doubtless persuaded themselves and been persuaded by their ghostly advisers that it was an act of virtue and justice and right, Cuthbert walked on, wondering more and more at the strange vagaries of human conscience, and at the extraordinary self delusion possible to the sons of the Romish faction. It was long since he had decided definitely and of resolute conviction to cast in his lot with those who held the Reformed faith; but had he ever had any secret doubts and leanings towards the faith in which he had been reared, the revelations of that night would have proved enough for him. He knew--none better--that this diabolic deed was planned and executed with the full consent, approbation, and blessing of the Romanist priests, and might even be known to the Pope himself. Sorrowful and indignant as Cuthbert had often been for the persecuted Romanists, and keenly as his sympathies would have been stirred had they risen in man-like fashion to claim liberty of conscience and fight boldly for the cause in which their hearts were bound up, he could regard a plot like this with nothing but loathing and horror. He wondered that men could be found willing to sell themselves to such iniquity. Yet he knew, from what he had himself seen, that these were no mere hirelings bought over with money to do this thing, but that they were gentlemen, most of them of noble birth and large means, all of them actuated by motives of devotion and religious enthusiasm; and that they did not prize their own lives or regard them as in any way precious, but would gladly offer them up so that this thing might be accomplished.