She thought of the way out of this very real danger with her swift woman wit, and hastily unbuttoning her dress, she pushed the sheets into her bosom. It was nothing that they were crumpled. What were three sheets of printed paper compared to the lives of two men?
To her, as she thrust them in, the papers seemed to make enough noise to be heard all over the house, for they crinkled in her hands, and the dampness came on her face lest she had been heard, and they should ask her what she had been doing.
While she was rapidly buttoning her dress she turned her face to the window, where the rain came against the glass in heavy gusts, just as the wind drove it. Below were the soldiers of the City Guard, as when she saw them last, two lines of silent, unmoving men, with their halberds gleaming.
The hope sprang in her heart that William Tyndale was really gone. He was not in Herman's room, or they would have found him. They were now going into Mistress Bengel's bedroom, and would they find him there? If not, he could not be in the house, for he was not in this chamber. Her woman mind showed her what a man might not have noticed. The bed was not made as if waiting for a sleeper. It was surprising. Herman's mother had taken away the sheets from the bed, and it looked as though the room had not been used for a long time past.
Margaret centred her attention on what might be taking place in that bedroom, and because the suspense was more than she could endure, she went to see what they were doing.
The men were there—the three; and it was a strange scene on which she gazed. Herman was standing aside, his back to the window, where he could see everything, and Margaret wondered at the expression on his face. It was something like injured innocence, and, painful though the tension was, she could not repress a smile when she saw him watching with the air of a person subjected to the ignominy of suspicion, and to have his home invaded for the search of a man who was not there.
The Captain had his sword drawn, and was walking round the room, looking into the cupboard, and under the bed, and behind the dresses which hung in a screened-off corner. In all reality serious, disastrous in its promise, it yet appeared ludicrous and undignified.
The man-at-arms was standing apart, and the look on his face when he glanced towards Herman intimated that he thought this a fool's errand, on which they had been sent by some mischief-loving fellow who wanted to hoax the City Guard. And on such a night! Of late they had been brought away from the comfortable guard-room for many a fruitless hunt for this fellow, Tyndale, and this was all of a piece with the past experience.
The search was fruitless, but the Captain was suspicious of a hiding-place. Going to the walls, and bidding the soldier do the same, he began to beat the handle of his sword against the walls. First resting his halberd in one corner of the room, the man drew a dagger from his belt and did as his Captain did. He banged on the wall until the dust began to fly, and the plaster began to drop in flakes upon the floor. William Tyndale was too big a prize to lose for the sake of a few bits of mortar. They were sounding for some hollow place where a man might hide.
"You need not spoil my home like that!" a woman's voice came unexpectedly, and Herman's mother pushed past Margaret into the room, and laid her hand on the soldier's wrist, speaking with some asperity. "I shall appeal to the Burgomaster, and require him to pay for the repair of this wanton damage."