Then they knew it had come—not the worst, but that which led to it—the beginning of the end.
Rose quietly, but quickly, put her gown on again. Before she was ready, she heard her step-father’s heavy tread as he went down the stairs; heard him draw the bolt, and say, as he opened the door, in calm tones—
“Good-morrow, Master Bailiff. Pray you enter with all honour, an’ you come in the Queen’s name.”
Just then the church clock struck two. Two o’clock on the Sabbath morning!
Chapter Twenty Four.
Rose’s fiery ordeal.
“Art thou come, dear heart?” said Alice Mount, as her daughter ran hurriedly into her bedchamber. “That is well. Rose, the Master is come, and calleth for us, and He must find us ready.”
There was no time to say more, for steps were ascending the stairs, and in another minute Master Simnel entered—the Bailiff of Colchester Hundred, whose office it was to arrest criminals within his boundaries. He was a rough, rude sort of man, from whom women were wont to shrink.