sent for by Godfrey and most
searchingly examined. He had thought himself the spy, when all the while
he had been the spied upon. The accursed Justice knew everything. He
knew a dozen episodes each enough to hang a poor man. He knew of Mr.
Lovel's dealings with the Jesuits Walsh and Phayre, and of a certain
little hovel in Battersea whose annals were not for the public ear.
Above all, he knew of the great Jesuit consult in April at the Duke of
York's house. That would have mattered little--indeed the revelation
of it was part of Mr. Lovel's plans--but he knew Mr. Lovel s precise
connection with it, and had damning evidence to boot. The spy shivered
when he remembered the scene in Hartshorn Lane. He had blundered and
stuttered and confessed his alarm by his confusion, while the Justice
recited what he had fondly believed was known only to the Almighty
and some few whose mortal interest it was to be silent.... He had been
amazed that he had not been there and then committed to Newgate. He had
not gone home that night, but wandered the streets and slept cold
under a Mairylebone hedge. At first he had thought of flight, but the
recollection of his household detained him. He would not go under. One
pompous fool alone stood between him and safety--perhaps fortune. Long
before morning he had resolved that Godfrey should die.

He had expected a difficult task, but lo! it was unbelievably easy.
About ten o'clock that day he had found Sir Edmund in the Strand. He
walked hurriedly as if on urgent business, and Lovel had followed him up
through Covent Garden, across the Oxford road, and into the Marylebone
fields. There the magistrate's pace had slackened, and he had loitered
like a truant schoolboy among the furze and briars. His stoop had
deepened, his head was sunk on his breast, his hands twined behind him.

Now was the chance for the murderer lurking in the brambles. It would be
easy to slip behind and give him the sword-point. But Mr. Lovel tarried.
It may have been compunction, but more likely it was fear. It was also
curiosity, for the magistrate's face, as he passed Lovel's hiding-place,
was distraught and melancholy. Here was another man with bitter
thoughts--perhaps with a deadly secret. For a moment the spy felt
a certain kinship.

Whatever the reason he let the morning go by. About two in the afternoon
Godfrey left the fields and struck westward by a bridle-path that led
through the Paddington Woods to the marshes no