"And you can't see even that with all that pack of soldiery."
"Boo! Boo! Death to the Papist!" screamed the other girls in unison.
Just for a moment then in the small space between the top of the archway, and above the heads of the crowd, Rose Marie caught sight of a closed hackney coach, being driven at slow pace and surrounded by an escort of musketeers. The hooting, hissing, and other expressions of hatred and opprobrium became almost deafening for the moment, and through the shouts of "The rope, the rack, the stake for the Papists!" could distinctly be heard the name, "Stowmaries!" accompanied by loud imprecations, whilst a shower of evil-smelling refuse was hurled at the vehicle by the enthusiastic staff of the Bell Inn, congregated at its gates.
Rose Marie felt sick with horror. Gradually that fear which had hitherto been nameless, gained more tangible shape. She peeped down again and saw that her husband had taken refuge inside his coach.
Then she understood.
It was Michael who had been arrested—the only Lord of Stowmaries, as he himself had proudly said awhile ago.
Did some inkling of the real truth of the case rise in her heart then and there, it were difficult to say. There is a strange telepathy which exists in nature and which warns the sensitive mind of the danger, the misfortune of another being. It was only a purely natural, human instinct which prompted her to ask the serving-wenches a final question, the answer to which she knew already.
"What is all the excitement about?" she asked, turning to the group of girls and steadying her voice as much as she could. "Who is it they are taking past in that closed carriage?"
"My lord of Stowmaries, Mistress," said one of the girls. "He is one of the Papists that do conspire against the king. He'll hang for sure—I wish they'd burn the lot as they did in the olden days."