“Ah!” answered the other. “I am of that camp and not of it. My brazen head will yet get me into trouble!” He sat regarding the mound opposite, the tall upright and arm, the creaking chain, and the shapeless thing, now small, for most of the bones had fallen, which swung and dangled. “And, friend, what do you think of this matter of the Golden Age, man’s perfection, Paradise, the friendship of angels and all wisdom and happiness lying, in the history of this orb, _behind_ us?” “If it were so,” said Aderhold, “then were it well to walk backwards.” “So saith my brazen head!—Hark!” It was a horn winding at no great distance. There came a sound of approaching horsemen, of voices and laughter. The waiting cavalier rose to his feet, caught his horse by the bridle and mounted. Aderhold gave him back the falcon. The earl and his train, a dozen in all, gentlemen, falconers, and grooms, coming across the fields, leaped the hedge and crowded into the road, gathering into their number the rider with the hawk. Aderhold heard him named as “Sir Richard.” He waved his hand to the physician—all rode away with a flash of colour and a blare of sound. A few moments, and there was only the bare highway, the little rise of ground, and the gibbet with its outstretched arm against the blue and serene sky. Aderhold, keeping on to the town, passed along its bustling high street, and down the steep slope, beneath the shadow of the great church and the castle in its woods above, to the river and its many-arched, ancient bridge. Before him lay the fair country between the town and Hawthorn village. He travelled through it in the late, golden light, and at sunset came into Hawthorn. Children were playing and calling in the one street and several lanes, on the green, by the pond, and the village stocks. The ale-house had its custom, but, as he presently saw, most of the inhabitants of Hawthorn were gathered in a buzzing cluster before the church. A post, riding from London north, had passed through the village and left behind a dole of news. Among his items, principal to Hawthorn was this: The King, they say, will presently of his good pleasure, lighten the pains and penalties now imposed upon Papists. Aderhold, touching the fringe of the crowd, caught a glimpse of Master Clement, standing upon the church steps, haranguing. He caught the words, “The Scarlet Woman ... Babylon ... Lighten? Rather double and treble and quadruple—” Near the minister he saw Harry Carthew. He did not pause; he went by like a moth in the dusk. As the moon rose he came to the stream before the Grange, crossed it by the footbridge, and went on beneath the fairy oak to the house where one candle shone from a single window. In the middle of the night he was wakened by some one calling and throwing pebbles against his casement. The miller, a mile down the stream, was ill and groaning for the leech. CHAPTER VII JOAN