"Nay, I do not know, right worshipful sir," replied the painter.
"I am not worshipful," answered the man; "but if thou dost not know, I am sorry, for thou hast lost a chance of life."
"But only hear how I came to be with them," cried poor Falgate. "I met the long-nosed man by chance in Hull; and finding him in godly company, and some of the governor's people with him, I thought there could be no harm in going with him to York, whither business called me."
"But he in the buff coat?" asked the soldier; "who is he?"
"Of him I know less than the other," rejoined the painter; "for he came up with us on the road, as we stopped at a little inn to bait our horses. There was with him then a Colonel Warren, who, after leaving us returned to Hull with a pious man, one Stumpborough, who had with him a troop of horse----"
"We know all that," replied the soldier gravely. "But, as it is so, you must prepare to die to-morrow. I say not that you lie unto us. It may be that you speak truth; but it is needful in these times that one should die for an example; and as you are a malignant, for your speech proves it, 'tis well you should be the man." Thus saying, he rode on again without giving time for Falgate to answer, and leaving him in the hands of the troopers as before.
The party, however, had suffered such loss that the number was now but small; and the poor painter, who by no means loved the idea of his promised suspension in the morning air of Hull, could hear the buzz of an eager but low-toned conversation going on in front, without being able to distinguish the words. He thought, indeed, that he caught the term "church" frequently repeated; but of that he was not sure. And though with a stout heart he resolved to say nothing, either of what he knew or suspected, it must be confessed he shook a little as he rode along.
At length, after an hour and a half's farther ride, they began to approach the Humber, and the moon shining out showed Falgate scenes which he had often passed through in former days, upon journeys of business or of pleasure. Now they came to a village in which was swinging, before a fast-closed house, a sign of his own painting; and now a hamlet in which he had enjoyed many a merry dance; till at length, passing over a long, bare, desolate piece of land, without tree, or hedgerow, or house, or break, running along the water's edge, they perceived upon a slight elevation, an old time-worn church, the resort of parishioners from a wide and thinly-populated tract, the old stone monuments and gloomy aisles of which had often filled the somewhat imaginative head of the painter with strange and awful visions, when he visited it on the Sunday evening in the decline of the year. At about five hundred yards farther on was a solitary house where the sexton lived; and stopping suddenly before the gate of the church-yard, the commander of the party bade one of his men ride on and get the key.
"What are they going to do?" thought Falgate. "The profane villains are not going to stable their horses in a church surely. Well, I shall be glad enough of rest anywhere, for Hull is three miles off; and I do not think my skin would hold out."
While he had been thus reasoning with himself, one of the troopers had got off his horse, and advancing through the little wicket of the church-yard, tried the door of the church.