“It is all found out, we think.  I find myself watched at every point, and I can get no speech with B. I cannot go forth from the house without a fellow to follow me, and two of my friends have found the same.  Mr. G., too, hath been with Mr. W. this three hours back.  By chance I saw him come in, and he has not yet left again.  Mr. Ch. is watching for me while I write this, and will see that this letter is bestowed on a trusty man who will bring it to your inn, and, with it, another letter to bid our party save themselves while they can.  I do not know how we shall fare, but we shall meet at a point that is fixed, and after that evade or die together.  You were right, you see.  Mr. G. has acted the traitor throughout, with Mr. W.’s connivance and assistance.  I beg of you, then, to carry this letter, which I send in this, to Her for whom we have forfeited our lives, or, at least, our country; or, if you cannot take it with safety, master the contents of it by note and deliver it to her with your own mouth.  She has been taken back to C. again, whither you must go, and all her effects searched.”

There was no signature, but there followed a dash of the pen, and then a scrawled “A.B.,” as if an interruption had come, or as if the man who was with the writer would wait no longer.

* * * * *

A third time Robin read it through.  It was terribly easy of interpretation.  “B.” was Ballard; “G.” was Gifford; “W.” was Walsingham; “Ch.” was Charnoc; “Her” was Mary Stuart; “C.” was Chartley.  It fitted and made sense like a child’s puzzle.  And, if the faintest doubt could remain in the most incredulous mind as to the horrible reality of it all, there was the piled luggage downstairs, that would never be “sent for” (and never, indeed, needed again by its owners in this world).

Then he took up the second sealed packet, and held it unbroken, while his mind flew like a bird, and in less than a minute he decided, and opened it.

It was a piteous letter, signed again merely “A.B.,” and might have been written by any broken-hearted reverent lover to his beloved.  It spoke an eternal good-bye; the writer said that he would lay down his life gladly again in such a cause if it were called for, and would lay down a thousand if he had them; he entreated her to look to herself, for that no doubt every attempt would now be made to entrap her; and it warned her to put no longer any confidence in a “detestable knave, G.G.”  Finally, he begged that “Jesu would have her in His holy keeping,” and that if matters fell out as he thought they would, she would pray for his soul, and the souls of all that had been with him in the enterprise.

He read it through three or four times; every line and letter burned itself into his brain.  Then he tore it across and across; then he tore the letter addressed to himself in the same manner; then he went through all the fragments, piece by piece, tearing each into smaller fragments, till there remained in his hands just a bunch of tiny scraps, smaller than snowflakes, and these he scattered out of the window.