ery day they feared to hear the approach of some messenger with
tidings of woe. There was terror in many hearts when a loud
explosion in the middle of the night roused them all from their
beds; but it was quickly seen that this explosion did not
immediately concern them, and that it must have proceeded from the
old Gate House, which was already wrapped in flames. The servants
hurried down to assist, but were too late. It was only many hours
later that the charred remains of what had once been two human
beings were found amongst the smoking ruins. A whisper went abroad
that a certain well-known seminary priest, by name Father Urban,
had fled from London, and had taken refuge with Nicholas Trevlyn.
It was surmised that the two must have been preparing themselves
for a siege, and that their ammunition had unexpectedly ignited and
caused the catastrophe.

To say that any one deplored the fate of the gloomy old man, who
was supposed to be little better than a maniac, would be going
altogether too far. Petronella shed a few tears, but they were
tears rather of relief than of sorrow; while Sir Richard felt that
he could breathe more freely when his contumacious kinsman had
ceased to live at his door.

The whisper which had alarmed his friends died a natural death so
soon as the real facts connected with the plot came to be known,
and the number and names of the true conspirators discovered.
Indeed, further inquiry appeared to elicit the fact that Cuthbert
Trevlyn had been striving to unravel and expose the plot, and that
he had been shot down by one of the genuine plotters as a spy and a
foe. As he had not since been seen or heard of, considerable
anxiety was felt in some quarters for his safety. Sir Richard was
causing inquiries to be made in London. Cherry was beginning to go
about looking pale and hollow eyed. Lady Humbert, who always
cheerily avowed that everything would come right in time, was
secretly not a little anxious, until a few days before the Yuletide
season, when she was called out into her own back regions to
interview a strange woman who was asking for her, and found herself
face to face with Joanna, the gipsy queen.

For a moment she scarcely knew the woman again, for she had put off
her distinctive dress, and was habited like a simple countrywoman.
Her face, too, had lost its brilliant colouring, and her eyes were
softer than of yore. She told the astonished Lady Humbert that her
mother Miriam was latel