"Ay, but will he be safe with me?" I objected.
"No doubt of that He has taken no part in these quarrels of ours for many a day, and they will not look for you in Ennerdale."
He sat down and wrote a letter.
"I will send you thither," he said, "with a servant I can trust, and as soon as may be we'll get you out of England;" and he rose, he crossed over to a table, and unlocking a drawer took out a little diary.
"Let me see!" he said. "To-day is St. Bartholomew's Day. It may be that I can send you across to France. Why, what ails you?"
"It is nothing," I replied hastily.
It was, indeed, the mere mention of the date which made me sway like a man falling and grasp at the table. To-day was St Bartholomew's Day. Then yesterday was the Eve, the Eve of St. Bartholomew. My thoughts went back to the preacher I had heard in Paris and to the picture of the dead man speaking, who had seemed in my imagination to thunder out at me, "The Eve of St. Bartholomew."
Lord Derwentwater went from the room to give his orders, and ten minutes later I was being rowed across the lake towards Silver Hill and watching two heads at the lighted window diminish into specks.
There was but the one man in the boat besides myself—Lord Derwentwater's servant Tash. Accordingly, on disembarking in a little wood on the west shores of Derwentwater, we drew the boat on to dry ground, and striking up the hillside walked southwards along the slopes of Catbells and Maiden Moor. But for my part I took little note of our direction. My head nodded on my shoulders, my feet stumbled behind my guide's in a mechanic progression. Had he led me back into Keswick town I should have followed him. I walked in a daze of weariness, sensible of but two things in the world: one that the fresh smell of the grass and parsley-fern was every way as sweet as lavender to lie in; the other that I must still walk on, since there was something to be done that I and I alone could do.
In the morning we moved yet higher up the slopes, and so walking ever southwards past Dale Head Tarn and Honister, came to a lofty ridge between Grey Knotts and Brandreth about nine o'clock of the morning. There my guide called a halt, and pulling my hat over my eyes I plumped down on the grass and slept without more ado.