owledge as to procedure; and the four men sat
together until dinner, in the parlour on the first floor looking over
the sunlit river; and discussed the entire situation.

The lawyer, Mr. Herries, a shrewd-faced Northerner, sat with his back to
the window, fingering a quill horizontally in his lean brown fingers and
talking in short sentences, glancing up between them, with patient
silences as the others talked. He seemed the very incarnation of the
slow inaction that was so infinitely trying to these anxious souls.

The three laymen did not even know the crime with which Ralph was
charged, but they soon learnt that the technical phrase for it was
misprision of treason.

"Mr. Torridon was arrested, I understand," said the lawyer, "by order of
Council. He would have been arrested in any case. He was known to be
privy to my Lord Essex's schemes. You inform me that he destroyed
evidence. That will go against him if they can prove it."

He drew the quill softly through his lips, and then fell to fingering it
again, as the others stared at him.

"However," went on Mr. Herries, "that is not our affair now. There will
be time for that. Our question is, when will he be charged, and how? My
Lord Essex may be tried by a court, or attainted in Parliament. I should
suppose the latter. Mr. Torridon will be treated in the same way. If it
be the former, we can do nothing but wait and prepare our case. If it be
the latter, we must do our utmost to keep his name out of the bill."

He went on to explain his reasons for thinking that a bill of attainder
would be brought against Cromwell. It was the customary method, he said,
for dealing with eminent culprits, and its range had been greatly
extended by Cromwell himself. At this moment three Catholics lay in the
Tower, attainted through the statesman's own efforts, for their supposed
share in a conspiracy to deliver up Calais to the invaders who had
threatened England in the previous year. Feeling, too, ran very high
against Cromwell; the public would be impatient of a long trial; and a
bill of attainder would give a readier outlet to the fury against him.

This then was the danger; but they could do nothing, said the lawyer, to
avert it, until they could get information. He would charge himself with
that business, and communicate with them as soon as he knew.

"And then?" asked Chris, looking at him desperately, for the cold
deliberate air of Mr. Herries gave him a terrible sense of