The two Carthews rode down the castle hill and through the town where people went dully to and fro with Fear in company. There rose the pungent smell of burning wood, a church bell made a slow and measured clangour. They passed between tall, gloomy, jutting houses, passed the prison with the stocks and pillory, and the great church with the sculptured portal, wound down to the river, and crossed the arched bridge. Before them rolled the yet wintry country. Mounting a hill, they saw on the horizon a purple-grey line that was Hawthorn Forest. The younger Carthew spoke. “It comes back to me.... That night at the Rose Tavern when he so suddenly appeared beside old Hardwick.... Master Anthony Mull, of Sack Hall, who was travelling with us, appeared to recognize him and flew out against him.... Wait a moment!—his very words will come back. He said—’Black sorcerer and devil’s friend!’” That afternoon a serving-man brought to a house at the foot of the castle hill a letter to be passed on by a safe hand to the physician from Hawthorn. It came into Aderhold’s hand as dusk was falling. He broke the seal and read by the light of one of the street fires. The letter—no lengthy one—came from his friend of the hawk and the silver box. It told him what the London physician had betrayed, though without malice, and to whom. It argued that it might be well to quit as quickly as possible this part of the country, or even to go forth for a time from England. It offered a purse and a horse; also, if it were wished for, a letter of commendation to the captain of a ship then lying at anchor at the nearest port, which captain, his own vessel being for longer voyages, would get him passage in some other ship touching at a Dutch port—“Amsterdam being to-day as safe as any place for a thinker—where no place is safe.” The letter ended with “The younger Carthew will move, no fear! Then, my friend, move first.”—An answer was to be left at the house at the foot of the hill. Aderhold mechanically folded the letter and placed it in the breast of his doublet. The fire was burning in an almost deserted street. Beside it was a bench where an old tender of fires sat at times and nodded in the warmth. He was not here now. Aderhold moved to the bench and sat down. He sat leaning forward, his hands clasped and hanging, his head bowed. After a time he sighed, straightened himself, and turning upon the bench looked about him. It was a gusty twilight with now and again a dash of rain. He looked up and down the solemn street. Some of the houses stood dark, those who had lived in them dead or fled. Behind the windows of others candles burned and shadows passed. This house he knew was stricken, and this and that. Here it was a child, here a young man or woman, here older folk. In more than one house there were many cases, a whole family stricken.... As he sat he heard the first cart of the night roll into the street, and a distant, toneless cry, “Bring out your dead!”