Christmas was come and gone, and no sign was made from London, so far, at least, as the little town was concerned.  There came almost daily from the castle new tales of slights put upon the Queen, and now and again of new favours granted to her.  Her chaplain, withdrawn for a while, had been admitted to her again a week before Christmas; a crowd had collected to see the Popish priest ride in, and had remarked on his timorous air; and about the same time a courier had been watched as he rode off to London, bearing, it was rumoured, one last appeal from one Queen to the other.  On the other hand, it was known that Mary no longer had her dais in her chamber, and that the billiard-table, which she never used, had been taken away again.

But all this had happened before Christmas, and now a month had gone by, and although this or that tale of discourtesy from gaoler to prisoner leaked out through the servants; though it was known that the crucifix which Mary had hung up in the place where her dais had stood remained undisturbed—­though this argument or the other could be advanced in turn by men sitting over their wine in the taverns, that the Queen’s cause was rising or falling, nothing was truly known the one way or the other.  It had been proclaimed, by trumpet, in every town in England, that sentence of death was passed; yet this was two or three months ago, and the knowledge that the warrant had not yet been signed seemed an argument to some that now it never would be.

* * * * *

A group was waiting (as a group usually did wait) at the village entrance to the new bridge lately built by her Grace of England, towards sunset on an evening late in January.  This situation commanded, so far as was possible, every point of interest.  It was the beginning of the London road, up which so many couriers had passed; it was over this bridge that her Grace of Scotland herself had come from her cross-country journey from Chartley.  On the left, looking northwards, rose the great old collegiate church, with its graceful lantern tower, above the low thatched stone houses of the village; on the right, adjoining the village beyond the big inn, rose the huge keep of the castle and its walls, within its double moats, ranged in form of a fetterlock of which the river itself was its straight side.  Beyond, the low rolling hills and meadows met the chilly January sky.

For four months now the village had been transformed into a kind of camp.  The castle itself was crammed to bursting.  The row of little windows beside the hall on the first floor, visible only from the road that led past the inn parallel to the river, marked the lodgings of the Queen, where, with the hall also for her use, she lived continually; the rest of the castle was full of men-at-arms, officers, great lords who came and went—­these, with the castellan’s rooms and those of his people, Sir Amyas’ lodgings, and the space occupied by