Thinking very blankly over this I began to munch the piece of bread which I owed to the old dame at Tottenham; and had solemnly got through half of it, when the sound of rapid footsteps--the footsteps of women, I judged from the lightness of the tread--caused me to hold my hand and listen. Whoever they were--and I wondered, for it was still early, and I had heard no one pass since the watchman left me--they came to a stand in front of my shelter, and one of them spoke. Her words made me start; unmistakably the voice was a gentlewoman's, such as I had not heard for almost a week. And at this place and hour, on the raw borderland of day and night, a gentlewoman was the last person I expected to light upon. Yet if the speaker were not some one of station, Petronilla's lessons had been thrown away upon me. The words were uttered in a low voice; but the planks in front of me were thin, and the speaker was actually leaning against them. I caught every accent of what seemed to be the answer to a question. "Yes, yes! It is all right!" she said, a covert ring of impatience in her tone. "Take breath a moment. I do not see him now." "Thank Heaven!" muttered another voice. As I had fancied, there were two persons. The latter speaker's tone smacked equally of breeding with the former's, but was rounder and fuller, and more masterful; and she appeared to be out of breath. "Then perhaps we have thrown him off the trail," she continued, after a short pause, in which she seemed to have somewhat recovered herself. "I distrusted him from the first, Anne--from the first. Yet, do you know, I never feared him as I did Master Clarence; and as it was too much to hope that we should be rid of both at once--they took good care of that--why, the attempt had to be made while he was at home. But I always felt he was a spy." "Who? Master Clarence?" asked she who had spoken first. "Ay, he certainly. But I did not mean him, I meant Philip." "Well, I--I said at first, you remember, that it was a foolhardy enterprise, mistress!" "Tut, tut, girl!" quoth the other tartly--this time the impatience lay with her, and she took no pains to conceal it--"we are not beaten yet. Come, look about! Cannot you remember where we are, nor which way the river should be? If the dawn were come, we could tell." "But with the dawn----" "The streets would fill. True, and, Master Philip giving the alarm, we should be detected before we had gone far. The more need, girl, to lose no time. I have my breath again, and the child is asleep. Let us venture one way or the other, and Heaven grant it be the right one!" "Let me see," the younger woman answered slowly, as if in doubt. "Did we come by the church? No; we came the other way. Let us try this turning, then."