paused a moment and once more silence fell on all those assembled in
the small cottage parlor. Sir Marmaduke felt as if every vein in his
body was gradually being turned to stone.

The sense of expectancy was so overwhelming that it completely paralyzed
every other faculty within him, and Editha's searching eyes seemed like
a corroding acid touching an aching wound. Yet for the moment there was
no danger. He had so surrounded himself and his crimes with mystery that
it would take more than a country squire's slowly moving brain to draw
aside that weird and ghostlike curtain which hid his evil deeds.

No! there was no danger--as yet!

But he cursed himself for a fool and a coward, not to have gone
away--abroad--long ere such a possible confrontation threatened him. He
cursed himself for being here at all--and above all for having left the
smith's clothes and the leather wallet in that lonely pavilion in the
park.

Squire Boatfield's kind eyes now rested on the old woman, who, awed and
silent--shut out by her infirmities from this strange drama which was
being enacted in her cottage--had stood calm and impassive by, trying to
read with that wonderful quickness of intuition which the poverty of one
sense gives to the others--what was going on round her, since she could
not hear.

Her eyes--pale and dim, heavy-lidded and deeply-lined--rested often on
the face of Richard Lambert, who, leaning against the corner of the
hearth, had watched the proceedings silently and intently. When the
Quakeress's faded gaze met that of the young man, there was a quick and
anxious look which passed from her to him: a look of entreaty for
comfort, one of fear and of growing horror.

"And so the exiled prince lodged in your cottage, mistress?" said
Squire Boatfield, after a while, turning to Mistress Lambert.

The old woman's eyes wandered from Richard to the squire. The look of
fear in them vanished, giving place to good-natured placidity. She
shuffled forward, in the manner which had so oft irritated her lodger.

"Eh? ... what?" she queried, approaching the squire, "I am somewhat hard
of hearing these times."

"We were speaking of your lodger, mistress," rejoined Boatfield, raising
his voice, "harm hath come to him, you know."

"Aye! aye!" she replied blandly, "harm hath come to our lodger.... Nay!
the Lord hath willed it so.... The stranger was queer in his ways.... I
don't wonder that harm hath come to him...."

"You remember