"What's the matter?"
"I thought I saw——"
The General uttered a sharp exclamation, pressing his head over the priest's shoulder.
"That's the second," whispered the priest harshly.
Together they waited, staring out together through the tall, narrow window that looked towards Rye.
Then for the third time there rose against the far-off horizon, above that faint peak of luminosity that marked where Rye watched over her marshes, a thin line of white fire, slackening its pace as it rose.
Before it had burst in sparks, there roared out overhead a deafening voice of fire and thunder, shaking the air about them, bewildering the brain. Then another. Then another.
Beneath the two as they stood, shaking with the shock, silent and open-mouthed, staring at one another, in the courtyard a door banged; then another; and then a torrent of voices and footsteps as the servants and grooms poured out of the lower doors.
(III)
Two hours later the two ecclesiastics sat together, on either side of the large table in the Cardinal's room. The Cardinal passed over the sheets one by one as he finished them. One set was being brought straight up here from the little office at the end of the hall. Another set, they knew, was simultaneously being read aloud by Lord Southminster in the hall below.