No volition of his own was needed to carry him onwards; wind and tide did all that.  He had merely to keep his place and steer his little bark up the wide river.  He saw against the sky the great pile of Westminster.  He had drifted almost across the river by that time.  He was seated in the bow of the boat, just dipping an oar from time to time as it slipped along beneath the trees.  And now the moon shone out for a few minutes clear and bright.  It did not shine upon his own craft, gliding so stealthily beneath the bare trees that fringed the wall of the very house he had come to see; but it did gleam upon another wherry out in midstream, rowed by a strong man wrapped in a cloak, and directed straight for the same spot.  Cuthbert started, and caught hold of a bough of a weeping willow, bringing his boat to a standstill in a place where the shadow was blackest.  He had no wish to be found in this strange position.  He would remain hidden until this other boat had landed at the steps.  He would be hidden well where he was.  He had better be perfectly silent, and so remain.

A sound of voices above his head warned him that he was not the only watcher, and for a moment he feared that, silent as had been his movements, his presence had been discovered.  But some one spoke in anxious accents, and in that voice he recognized the clear and mellow tones of Robert Catesby.  He was speaking in a low voice to some companion.

“If he comes not within a short while, I shall hold that all is lost.  I fear me we did wrong to send him.  That letter—­that letter—­that luckless letter! who can have been the writer?”

“Tresham, I fear me without doubt, albeit he denied it with such steadfast boldness.  Would to heaven that fickle hound had never been admitted to our counsels!  That was thy doing, Catesby.”

“Ay, and terribly do I repent me of it, Winter.  I upbraid myself as bitterly as any can upbraid me for the folly.  But hark—­listen!  I hear the plash of oars.  See, there is a boat!  It is he—­it is Fawkes!  I know him by his height and his strong action.  Heaven be praised!  All cannot yet be lost!  Move upwards yet a few paces, and we will speak to him here alone before we take him within doors to the others.

“Guido Fawkes!  Good Guy, is that verily thou?”

“Verily and in truth, my masters.  Has the time seemed long?”

“Terribly long.  How foundest thou all?”

“All well—­all as I left it weeks ago.  There has been no soul within.  Gunpowder, faggots, iron bars, and stones—­all are as before; and above, the coal and faggots carefully concealing all.  Why this anxiety and fear, Catesby? it was not wont to be so with thee.”

“No; but I have something of terrible import to reveal to thee, good Guy.  And first I must ask thy pardon for thus exposing thee to peril as this day I did.  I sent thee on this mission of inspection; but I ought first to have told thee that we are in fear and trembling lest we have been betrayed!”