oaths, that I thought it best to draw
no more attention to myself, and presently slipped away. Then I thought
myself of a little rising ground, a good bit in advance, whence, perhaps
I might be able to see something of what was passing; and I made my way
across the street, to a lane that led round on the north. As I came
across, in the fringes of the crowd, I saw a minister walking, in his
cassock; so I saluted him courteously, and asked what the matter was.

He looked at me with an agitated face, and said nothing: his lips
worked, and he was very pale, yet it seemed to me with anger: so I asked
him again; and this time he answered.

"Sir, I do not know who you are," he said. "But it is Sir Edmund Berry
Godfrey who has been foully murdered by the Papists. He hath been found
on Primrose Hill, and we are taking him to his house. I do not know,
sir--"

But I was gone; and up the lane as fast as I could run. All that I had
heard, all that I had feared, all even that I had dreamed, was being
fulfilled. The links were forging swiftly. I do not know, even now as I
write, how it was that Sir Edmund met his end, whether he had killed
himself, as I think--for he was of a melancholiac disposition, as was
his father and his grandfather before him--or whether, as indeed I think
possible, he was murdered by the very man who swore so many Catholic
lives away, by way of giving colour to his own designs--for if a man
will swear away twenty lives, what should hinder him from taking one?
One thing only I know, that no Catholic, whether old or young, Jesuit or
not, saint or sinner, had any act or part in it; and on that I would lay
down my own life.

By the time that I arrived at the rising mound--for a force mightier
than prudence drove me to see the end--the head of the great concourse
was beginning to arrive. Across the street from side to side stretched
the company, all tramping together and murmuring like the sound of the
sea. It was as if all London town was gone mad: for I do not believe
there were above twenty men in that great mob, who were not persuaded
that here was the corroboration of all that had been said upon the
matter of the plot; and that the guilt of the Papists was made plain.
Some roared, as they came, threats and curses upon the Pope, the
Jesuits, and every Catholic that drew breath; but the most part marched
silently, and more terribly, as it appeared to me. The street was
becoming as light as day, for torches