Now, what should he do? At this hour the doors would be shut and all the lower windows of the house securely fastened, nor could he open them without attracting attention. But he remembered that George had once descended from the balcony to the river,—a perilous, but practicable feat, which he had heard him describe, with all its circumstances, for the benefit of James and Ned. Walter, naturally brave, was capable in this hour of excitement of the wildest daring. His head was steady, and his limbs were light and agile. In a moment he was out on the balcony, over it, clinging to it with both hands while he sought foothold beneath. He had not, fortunately, to intrust himself to a trim, modern building, smooth as glass from attic to basement. The kitchen window, an old statue of a saint in a niche, uneven stones here and there, tufts of grass, weeds, lastly the bridge buttress, gave him the support he needed, and enabled him at length to drop exhausted, but unhurt, into the dark cold waters beneath. He was soon helped into the boat by the astonished, but admiring Eustace Jenkyns. And thus Walter Grey, by one egregious act of folly, or rather of madness, falsified the promise of his thoughtful childhood and precocious boyhood, gave the lie to all his past life, and utterly changed all his future. XXIII. Where it Led. “Oh! what a tale to shadow with its gloom That happy home in England. Idle fear! Would the winds tell it?” HEMANS. Three years have passed away since Walter Grey so suddenly and strangely forsook his home and his friends. During that time he has had his heart’s desire—in part, at least. He has seen how the sunlight glistens on the waters of the Spanish main, his foot has pressed the flowery shores of unknown islands, and his hand has borne part, not unworthily, in England’s great naval contest with the enemies of her creed and her race. But for all this he has paid a heavy price. He has taken his own way, and whither has it led him? Haply to an early grave, amongst the shells and sea-weed, fathoms deep below the blue waters he so longed to look upon? Had such been his fate, many might have mourned, but some would have envied him; and certainly, no forebodings of an early, honourable death would have done aught to deter him from the path he had chosen. But the English mariner who in those days dared to invade the Spanish main, the Pope’s gift to his favourite son, had to brave dangers far more terrible. The Holy Inquisition stretched its ghastly arm over half the globe, and with a touch, “cold, strong, passionless, like a dead man’s clasp,” claimed and held every English prisoner that fell into Spanish hands.