now and desolate where once the praises of God had sounded day and
night.

They stopped beneath the swinging sign of an inn, with Westminister
towers blue and magical before them, to ask for Mistress Atherton's
house, and were directed a little further along and nearer to the
water's edge.

It was a little old house when they came to it, built on a tiny private
embankment that jutted out over the flats of the river-bank; of plaster
and timber with overhanging storeys and windows beneath the roof. It
stood by itself, east of the village, and almost before the jangle of
the bell had died away, Beatrice herself was at the door, in her
house-dress, bare-headed; with a face at once radiant and constrained.

She took them upstairs immediately, after directing the men to take the
horses, when they had unloaded the luggage, back to the inn where they
had enquired the way: for there was no stable, she said, attached to the
house.

Chris came behind his father as if in a dream through the dark little
hall and up the two flights on to the first landing. Beatrice stopped at
a door.

"You can say what you will," she said, "before my aunt. She is of our
mind in these matters."

Then they were in the room; a couple of candles burned on a table before
the curtained window; and an old lady with a wrinkled kindly face
hobbled over from her chair and greeted the two travellers.

"I welcome you, gentlemen," she said, "if a sore heart may say so to
sore hearts."

There was no news of Nicholas, they were told; he had not been heard of.

* * * * *

They heard the story so far as Beatrice knew it; but it was softened for
their ears. She had found Ralph, she said, hesitating what to do. He had
been plainly bewildered by the sudden news; they had talked a while; and
then he had handed her the papers to burn. The magistrate sent by the
Council had arrived to find the ashes still smoking. He had questioned
Ralph sharply, for he had come with authority behind him; and Ralph had
refused to speak beyond telling him that the bundles lying on the floor
were all the papers of my Lord Essex that were in his possession. They
had laid hands on these, and then searched the room. A quantity of
ashes, Beatrice said, had fallen from behind a portrait over the hearth
when they had shifted it. Then the magistrate had questioned her too,
enquired where she lived, and let her go. She had waited at the corner
of the stre