He held his hands to his face for a few moments, and his body shook with sobs, as it can only do with a strong man in his agony.
Margaret gazed at him. He spoke with a foreign accent, and something reminded her of Master Tyndale.
Brushing his hands across his face, and without another word, the man stepped to and fro in the narrow archway, and then went into the storm and walked away with bent head, while the pelting rain beat on him. Margaret marked how his hands clenched while he passed along in a direction opposite to that which the armed Guard had taken.
His going after those unexpected words made her heart palpitate the more, for if the Guard took that man's daughter, would they hesitate to take a man, and that man her lover?
"No! They would not!"
The words were cried out on the night, but the wind beat them down, and perhaps no one heard them.
The thought that obsessed Margaret was that the Guard were going for Herman. They must have discovered that it was Tyndale whom he had carried up the steps at the Water-Gate. It must be so! Five hundred golden pieces were to be the reward of the man or men who found him who harboured William Tyndale. Five hundred! It meant wealth. Who would care for rain, or pity, when so much gold was to be had?
Lower down the street, which was a very long one, there was a bend, and from the archway Margaret could not see Herman's house. She must see for herself whether the Guard passed it by, in spite of the pelting rain and the boisterous wind.
She left the archway and ran along the causeway with a light, swift tread, careless as to the beating of her soddened dress against her knees. Herman's home lay beyond the bend, but not very far, and they must be very near to it by this time. In her haste she did not see a man standing in the way, with his arms outstretched to stop her.
"My dainty darling!" he cried drunkenly, but she endeavoured to evade him. She failed, and his arms closed about her, and he drew her to him and set his wet and hairy cheek against hers.