“No, sir,” said the man again, “a good Protestant; and the son of Mr. Norris at the Dower House.”
“Ah!” said the magistrate again, judicially. “And what might you be wanting here, Master Anthony Norris?”
Anthony explained that he often came up in the evening, and that he wanted nothing. The magistrate eyed him a moment or two.
“Well, I have nothing against you, young gentleman. But I cannot let you go, till I am safely set out. You might rouse the village. Take him out till we start,” he added to the man who guarded him.
“Come this way, sir,” said the officer; and Anthony presently found himself sitting on the long oak bench that ran across the western end of the hall, at the foot of the stairs, and just opposite the door of Sir Nicholas’ room where he had just witnessed that curious startling scene.
The man who had charge of him stood a little distance off, and did not trouble him further, and Anthony watched in silence.
The hall was still dark, except for one candle that had been lighted by the magistrate’s party, and it looked sombre and suggestive of tragedy. Floor walls and ceiling were all dark oak, and the corners were full of shadows. A streak of light came out of the slightly opened door opposite, and a murmur of voices. The rest of the house was quiet; it had all been arranged and carried out without disturbance.
Anthony had a very fair idea of what was going forward; he knew of course that the Catholics were always under suspicion, and now understood plainly enough from the conversation he had heard that the reddish-haired young man, standing so alert and cheerful by the table in there, had somehow precipitated matters. Anthony himself had come up on some trifling errand, and had run straight into this affair; and now he sat and wondered resentfully, with his eyes and ears wide open.
There were men at all the inner doors now; they had slipped in from the outer entrances as soon as word had reached them that the prisoners were secured, and only a couple were left outside to prevent the alarm being raised in the village. These inner sentinels stood motionless at the foot of the stairs that rose up into the unlighted lobby overhead, at the door that led to the inner hall and the servants’ quarters, and at those that led to the cloister wing and the garden respectively.
The murmur of voices went on in the room opposite; and presently a man slipped out and passed through the sentinels to the door leading to the kitchens and pantry; he carried a pike in his hand, and was armed with a steel cap and breast-piece. In a minute he had returned followed by Mr. Boyd, Sir Nicholas’ body-servant; the two passed into the study—and a moment later the dark inner hall was full of moving figures and rustlings and whisperings, as the alarmed servants poured up from downstairs.