that I had chosen—­to “serve the King.”  Well; I must do so now, wherever it led me.  What, however, greatly added to the horror of my position was that I knew that this strong fellow at my side thought me to be a traitor to himself and was using that knowledge only for his own ends.  He would surely be ruthless if he found I had served my turn; and here was I, riding to his house, and only two men in the world knew whither I was gone.

Rumbald had already dined; and thought not at all of me.  We drew rein therefore, nowhere; but rode straight on, through village and country alike—­now ambling for a little, once or twice cantering, and then walking again when the way had holes in it.  So we passed through Totteridge and Barnet and Enfield Chase and Wood Green, and came at last to Broxbourne where the roads forked, and we turned down to the right.  It was terrible that ride—­all in silence; once or twice I had attempted a general observation; but he answered so shortly that I tried no more; and I am not ashamed to say that I committed myself again and again to the tuition of Our Lady of Good Counsel whose picture I had venerated in Rome.  Indeed, it was counsel that I needed.

I did not know precisely where was the Rye, nor what it was like; for I had avoided the place, of design.  I supposed it only a little place, perhaps in a village.  I was a trifle disconcerted therefore when, as we crossed the Lea by a wooden bridge, he pointed with his whip, in silence, to a very solid-looking house that even had battlemented roofs—­not two hundred yards away, to the left of the road.  There was no other building that I could see, except the roofs of an outhouse or two, and suchlike.  However, I nodded, and said nothing.  No words were best:  in silence we rode on over the bridge, and beyond; and in silence we turned in through a gateway, and up to the house, crossing a moat as we went.

Indeed, now I was astonished more than ever at the house.  It was liker a castle.  There was an arched entrance, very solid, all of brick, with the teeth even of a portcullis shewing.  An old man came out of a door on our right, as our hoofs rang out; but he made no sign or salute; he took our horses’ heads as we dismounted, and I heard him presently leading them away.

Still without speaking, the Colonel led me through the little guard-room on the right, hung round with old weapons of the Civil War, and up a staircase at the further end.  At the head of the staircase a door was open on the right, and I saw a bed within; but we went up a couple more steps on the left, and came out into the principal living-room of the house.

It was a very good chamber, this, panelled about eight feet up the walls, with the bricks shewing above, but whitewashed.  A hearth was on the right; a couple of windows in the wall opposite, and another door beyond the hearth.  The furniture was very plain but very good:  a great table stood under the windows with three or four chairs about it.  The walls seemed immensely strong and well-built; and, though the place could not stand out for above an hour or two against guns, in the old days it could have faced a little siege of men-at-arms, very well.