sted were no whit too strong a word--by the King's forces
under Feversham and the odious Kirke, and there began a reign of terror
for the town. The prisons were choked with attainted and suspected
rebels. From Bridgwater to Weston Zoyland the road was become an avenue
of gallows, each bearing its repulsive gemmace-laden burden; for the
King's commands were unequivocal, and hanging was the order of the day.

It is not my desire at this stage to surfeit you with the horrors that
were perpetrated during that hideous week of July, when no man's life
was safe from the royal butchers. The awful campaign of Jeifreys and
his four associates was yet to follow, but it is doubtful if it could
compare in ruthlessness with that of Feversham and Kirke. At least, when
Jeifreys came, men were given a trial--or what looked like it--and there
remained them a chance, however slender, of acquittal, as many lived to
prove thereafter. With Feversham there was no such chance. And it was
of this circumstance that Sir Rowland Blake took the fullest and the
cowardliest advantage.

There can be no doubt that Sir Rowland was a villain. It might be
urged for him that he was a creature of circumstance, and that had
circumstances been other it is possible he had been a credit to his
name. But he was weak in character, and out of that weakness he had
developed a Herculean strength in villainy. Failure had dogged him in
everything he undertook. Broken at the gaming-tables, hounded out of
town by creditors, he was in desperate straits to repair his fortunes
and, as we have seen, he was not nice in his endeavours to achieve that
end.

Ruth Westmacott's fair inheritance had seemed an easy thing to conquer,
and to its conquest he had applied himself to suffer defeat as he had
suffered it in all things else. But Sir Rowland did not yet acknowledge
himself beaten, and the Bridgwater reign of terror dealt him a fresh
hand--a hand of trumps. With this he came boldly to renew the game.

He was as smooth as oil at first, a very penitent, confessing himself
mad in what he had done on that Sunday night--mad with despair and rage
at having been defeated in the noble task to which he had turned his
hands. His penitence might have had little effect upon the Westmacotts
had he not known how to insinuate that it might be best for them to lend
an ear to it--and a forgiving one.

"You will tell Mr. Westmacott, Jasper," he had said, when Jasper told
him that they cou