Kirke's Lambs upon his hands was held fit to wash many a sin from a man's soul. Now, knowing his life not worth a hoof's paring if he fell into their hands, and unwilling to lead those men of blood to Royston, Ned did lie all that day in some deep woodland near Crewkerne, trusting his knowledge of the roads should give him by night the greater advantage over his pursuers, and hoping to obtain privily a fresh horse, when the sun was well set, for his journey to the coast. CHAPTER IV Now all this day I had been keeping the house, at my father's strict command, he being most solicitous that for their safety none of his household should meet with the gang of cutthroats he knew to be then in the village. Being thus cut off from news, we had no knowledge of what was toward, conjecturing, however, some wickedness from the sound of those three musket-shots that I have mentioned. About nine o'clock of the evening, then, I went to my chamber, sad, indeed, and anxious for the fate of the Drayton folk, and with many a shudder of horror as the things I had heard tell of that regiment, called at one time of Tangier, at another, Queen Catharine's, came unwelcome to my mind. And I remember that, as I put off my clothes, I marvelled how a woman high and gently born as that lady of Portugal could take pleasure to have such men bear her name. But, with all my perturbation, my mood was mild and peaceful to what it had been had I known at whom those same shots had been fired. Yet was there on my spirit a sense of unrest, and (as it seems to me now, perhaps in the light of after knowledge) of foreboded evil that would in no manner let me sleep. So it was that, about half an hour after I had bidden good-night to my father and Mr. Telgrove, I extinguished my one candle, and, it being a warm but clouded night, sat at the open window in my night-robe, trying idly to bring my eyes to pierce the darkness, and as idly considering when I was like again to see Ned. Here I sat, but for how long a period of time I know not. Yet I do remember that I heard all those sounds that indicate the closing in of night and sleep over a great house. And last came the drawing of bolts and setting of bars below, and the slow and halting step of my father's ascent of the stairs, and, with the closing of his chamber door, a stillness as of the grave was over all things. I thought it was such a stillness as I had never known; and then there grew upon my spirit (or, at least, it now seems to me that it was so) a foreknowledge that something, I knew not what, but something--something--something was coming out from this silence to break it. And with a slowly growing horror I did then fall to speculating upon the nature of this so certain interruption; would it be some ghastly vision of another world, or a cry of wrath, or some more horrible scream of terror? As one grown suddenly cold I arose from my seat by the window, with a shudder at the creatures of my