Mistress Borrow was not at the castle. Her sister, thirty miles away, was dying of a dropsy, and the housekeeper had been given leave to go to her. She had gone last week—she might be away a month.... The family were not there—they had gone at the first alarm of the plague. Sir Richard had stayed through it and my lord the countess’s father, had stopped for a week, but they, too, were now away.... It was a civil-spoken girl who told her all this, a new maidservant who had no knowledge of Joan. There were men and women servitors whom she remembered and who would remember her, but when the girl asked if, Mistress Borrow being away, she could do her errand to any one else, she shook her head. “You look dazed,” said the maid. “Better come in and sit awhile.” But no, said Joan, she must be getting home. So she thanked the girl, and they said good-morning to each other, and she left the little door and the flagged courtyard, and coming out under an archway found herself again upon the flower-starred grass, with the shadows of the trees showing two hours from noon. To the right stretched the castle wood, and she would go through it and see again the huntsman’s house. It rose among the trees before her, a comfortable, friendly, low, deep-windowed place. She would not go very near; she did not know the people who had it now, and truly she felt dazed and beaten and did not wish questioning or talk. She found an old, familiar oak with huge and knotted roots rising amid bracken, and here she sank down and lay with her head upon her arm and her eyes upon the place where in all her life she had been happiest. An old hound came and snuffed about her, a redbreast watched her from a bough. She lay for some time, resting, not thinking but dreaming back. At last she rose, settled the basket upon her arm, looked long at the huntsman’s house, then turned away, and leaving the wood began to descend the castle hill. When she passed through the high street of the town the church bells were ringing. She turned out of the brighter street into one that sloped to the river, and here she came upon an open place and the prison tall and dark. She stopped short, standing in the shadow of a bit of wall. It was easy for one’s own cares to make one forget, and she had forgotten Aderhold. But he would be here—there was no real gaol in Hawthorn itself, though offenders might be locked for a time in a dungeon-like room beneath the sexton’s house. But a learned man and a property-owner and a man accused of the greatest crime of all, which was to deny the real existence and power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,—such an one would be brought here. They would have haled Master Aderhold here last night.... She stood and gazed at the frowning mass. The windows were few and far apart and small and closely barred. To-day that was so sunshiny bright would be stifling and black enough in there. She wished that she could send in the light and air.