"Come in," she heard Herman say in an easy tone.
The Captain called to three men to step forward, and the four soldiers entered the house.
Margaret asked herself the question—What should she do? But what was it possible to do? Her presence or her absence could in no way serve Herman; and yet she wanted to be near him in his trouble, to throw her arms about him ere they took him away to those horrible dungeons in the Holy House—the headquarters of the Inquisition—and whisper in his ear that whatever came she was his, for life or for death, just as God willed.
The thought decided her. She sprang up from the step on which she had been sitting in the shadow, around which, unknown to her, the water had gathered and soaked into her dress, and hurried across the road. Disregarding the soldiers lined up in the middle of the street, standing still in the pelting rain, she was moving up the steps, feeling the water squashing in her shoes as she moved.
The soldiers inside the house were standing about; one in the front room with the Captain—in the very place where she had last spoken to William Tyndale—and two others near the foot of the staircase, and in such a position as to look up the stairs, or into the room where Herman's mother usually sat.
Margaret's lips parted in wonder, for Mistress Bengel, who was there, was perfectly self-possessed, her hands idle, it is true, and her usual sewing lying untouched on the table. Whether her ease was real or assumed it was difficult to say, but Margaret was puzzled.
When the girl entered the room, white faced and startled, she looked up and smiled.
"I have visitors, my dear," she said, in her pleasant way.
It was mysterious. Was William Tyndale gone away from the house, so that Herman and his mother could afford to be at ease even with the Captain of the Guard paying this unwelcome visit? Or—and the thought came over her with startling force—was the poor man dead, and, being so, was it of no consequence if the soldier should find his dead body lying in his bedroom?
But dead!