The March wind roared through London and over Merry England and around Richmond park and hill. It shook the palace windows. Within, in the great room with the great bed, the old Queen lay upon the floor with pillows beneath her, with her brows drawn together above her hawk nose. At intervals her mortal disease and lack of all comfort wrung a moan, or she gave one of her old, impatient, round, mouth-filling oaths. For the most part she lay quite silent, uneating, unsleeping, her fleshless fingers keeping time against the rich cloth beneath her. Her women did not love her as the women of Mary Stuart had loved that Queen. Year in and year out, day in and day out, they had feared this Queen; now she was almost past fearing. They took no care to tell her that the carmine upon her face was not right, or that she had pushed the attire of hair to one side, and that her own hair showed beneath and was grey. They reasoned, perhaps with truth, that she might strike the one who told. She lay in her rich garments upon the floor, and the fire burned with a low sound beneath the wreathed tritons and she smoothed the gold cloth with her fingers. “_England—Scotland—Ireland.... Mere English—... The Pope down, but I’ll have the Bishops still—_” CHAPTER II THE CAP AND BELLS THE inn was small and snug, near Cheapside Cross, and resorted to by men of an argumentative mind. The Mermaid Tavern, no great distance away, had its poets and players, but the Cap and Bells was for statesmen in their own thought alone, and for disputants upon such trifles as the condition of Europe, the Pope, and the change in the world wrought by Doctor Martin Luther. It was ill-luck, certainly, that brought Gilbert Aderhold to such a place. When he lost hope of any help from Cecil, the evident first thing to do upon returning from Richmond to London, was to change to lodgings that were less dear,—indeed, to lodgings as little dear as possible. His purse was running very low. He changed, with promptitude, to a poor room in a poor house. It was cold at night and dreary, and his eyes, tired with reading through much of the day, ached in the one candlelight. He went out into the dark and windy street, saw the glow from the windows and open door of the Cap and Bells, and trimmed his course for the swinging sign, a draught of malmsey and jovial human faces.