al of warders from the beacon.

They were hurried into the chapter-house, together with their prisoner,
who had now taken to the sulks, refusing any reply to the numerous
inquiries made by the servants who followed, eager for the final
disclosure.

The room was lighted by a single lamp. Little of the interior was
visible, save the grim and ascetic faces of the monks who sat nearest to
the centre of illumination. Their features, in deep masses of alternate
light and shadow, looked as if carved out, hard and immovable, from the
oak wainscot. Occasionally, a dull roll of the eye relieved the
oppressive stillness, and the gazer would look out from the mystic world
he inhabited, through these loop-holes of sense, into the world of
sympathies and affections, with which he had long ceased to hold
communion.

Paslew was standing when they entered. His bushy grey eyebrows threw a
strange and almost unnatural shade over the deep recesses beneath,
across which, at times, like the foam swept over the dark billows of the
spirit, a light and glowing track was visible, marking the powerful
conflict within.

"Nicholas Dewhurst and Daniel Haydock."

He shaded his eyes from the light, as he thus addressed the foremost of
the party who had just entered.

"From what quarter was the signal first visible?"

"My lord," said Dan, "we are but unworthy of your highness' grace, did
we not answer truly."

"Quick!--Thou art slower to thine answers than thy words. Why tarriest
thou?"

"If your highness will pardon"--

"What?" said Paslew, in a voice that made the culprits quake. "I pardon
nothing. What means this silence?"

"Please your reverence," said Will, now advancing from the rear, his
rhetorical flourishes somewhat curtailed, and his confidence thereby
wonderfully abated, "the first signal was our own, lighted by an
incendiary, to wit, and here we bring him to your highness' reverence
for judgment. We ordered the rope and the broad beam to be ready by
daybreak."

It were idle to paint the astonishment and dismay which this short
narrative produced. Paslew immediately saw the dangers by which he was
involved. He was, by this desperate and unfortunate act, at once
committed to the measures from which he had hitherto kept aloof, and he
must now stand foremost in the cause, or tamely submit to the infuriate
vengeance which this overt act of rebellion would inevitably hasten. He
had hoped that, sheltered in this quiet nook, he sho