I never saw my father again, nor learned accurately what passed at Watney's farm after Petronilla was missed by her two companions. But one man, whom I could ill spare, was also missing on that night, whose fate is still something of a mystery. That was Martin Luther. I have always believed that he fell in a desperate encounter with my father, but no traces of the struggle, or his body were ever found. The track between Watney's farm and Stratford, however, runs for a certain distance by the river; and at some point on this road I think Martin must have come up with the refugees, and failing either to find Petronilla with them, or to get any satisfactory account of her, must have flung himself on my father and been foiled and killed. The exact truth I have said was never known, though Baldwin and I talked over it again and again; and there were even some who said that a servant much resembling Martin Luther was seen with my father in the Low Countries not a month before his death. I put no credence in this, however, having good reason to think that the poor fool--who was wiser in his sane moments than most men--would never have left my service while the breath remained in his body. I have heard it said that blood washes out shame. My father was killed in a skirmish in the Netherlands shortly before the peace of Chateau Cambrésis, and about three months after the events here related. I have no doubt that he died as a brave man should; for he had that virtue. He held no communication with me or with any at Coton End later than that which I have here described; but would appear to have entered the service of Cardinal Granvelle, the governor of the Netherlands, for after his death word came to the Duchess of Suffolk that Mistress Anne Cludde had entered a nunnery at Bruges under the Cardinal's auspices. Doubtless she is long since dead.