This question no one could answer. Lord Monteagle took the letter from the reader, pocketed it, and turned the conversation to other topics. The thoughts of the company soon passed from the singular warning; and occupied by their own fancies and amusements, they did not notice that their host quitted them as soon as they left the dining-room.
With the letter in his pocket, Lord Monteagle slipped out of his garden gate, mounted his horse, and rode to his house in the Strand. Leaving the horse here, he went down to the water-side, where he hailed a boat, and was rowed to Westminster Stairs. To hail a boat was as natural and common an incident to a Londoner of that day as it is now to call a cab or stop an omnibus. Lord Monteagle stepped lightly ashore, made his way to the Palace of Whitehall, and asked to speak at once with the Earl of Salisbury, Lord High Treasurer of England.
Note 1. These exemplary women really resided at Southampton, a few years later.
Note 2. A letter of Lord Chief-Justice Popham would be a suitable subject for a competitive examination.
Chapter Eight.
The Fifth of November.
“Better to have dwelt unlooked for in some forest’s shadows dun,
Where the leaves are pierced in triumph by the javelins of the sun!
Better to be born and die in some calm nest, howe’er obscure,
With a vine about the casements, and a fig-tree at the door!”