In the vaulted room his statement was received in silence; a silence dictated by no feeling for the woman going before her Maker--how should we who were plotting against her feel for her, we who were for the most part homeless and proscribed through her?--but the silence of men in doubt, in doubt whether this might mean all that from Sir Thomas's aspect it seemed to mean. "She cannot live a week!" Penruddocke continued. "The doctors have given up hope, and at the palace all is in confusion. She has named the Princess Elizabeth her successor, and even now Cecil is drawing up the proclamations. To show that the game is really up, the Count de Feria, the Spanish Ambassador, has gone this very day to Hatfield to pay his respects to the coming queen." Then indeed the vaulted roof did ring--ring and ring again with shouts of "The Coming Queen!" Men over whom the wings of death had seemed a minute ago to be hovering, darkening all things to them, looked up and saw the sun. "The Coming Queen!" they cried. "You need fear nothing!" continued Penruddocke wildly. "No one will dare to execute the warrants. The Bishops are shaking in their miters. Pole is said to be dying. Bonner is more likely to hang himself than burn others. Up and out and play the man! Away to your counties and get ready your tar-barrels! Now we will give them a taste of the Cujus Regio! Ho! drawer, there! A cup of ale!" He turned, and shouting a scrap of a song, swaggered back into the shaft and began to ascend. They all trooped after him, talking and laughing, a reckless, good-natured crew, looking to a man as if they had never known fear or selfishness--as if distrust were a thing impossible to them. Master Kingston alone, whom his losses had soured and who still brooded over his revenge, went off moodily. I was for stopping one of them; but Master Bertie directed my eyes by a gesture of his hand to the door at the far end of the cellar, and I saw that the key was in the lock. He wrung my hand hard. "Tell him all," he muttered. "I will wait above." CHAPTER XXI. MY FATHER. Tell him all? I stood thinking, my hand on the key. The voices of the rearmost of the conspirators sounded more and more faintly as they passed up the shaft, until their last accents died in the room above, and silence followed; a silence in strange contrast with the bright glare of the torches which burned round me and lit up the empty cellar as for a feast. I was wondering what he would say when I told him all--when I said "I am your son! I, whom Providence has used to thwart your plans, whose life you sought, whom, without a thought of pity, you left to perish! I am your son!"