A porter soon brought us a coach, and Betty, having explained to her father where and why she was going, climbed in with George and me, and we were off.

CHAPTER IX

KIDNAPPED

We found Lilly at home, eager to help us.  He asked many questions relating to my cousin’s life and her friends at court, to all of which I made full answer in so far as I knew, including an account of the king’s objectionable attentions.  I suspected that the Doctor would make more use of the knowledge he obtained from me than of that to be received from the stars, but I did not care how he reached his conclusions if he could but tell us how and where to find Frances.

Lilly questioned Betty also, and when he had learned all that she knew, he left us seated in the parlor while he went to his observatory to set a figure.  In the course of ten minutes he returned and gave us the result of his calculations, as follows:—­

“I believe I can tell you where Mistress Jennings is, and how she may be found,” he said, speaking and acting as one walking in sleep.  “But your failure to tell me the exact hour of her birth lends uncertainty to my calculations.  I have all the particulars concerning the nativity of a man whom I shall not name.  I have read the stars many times for him and on many subjects.  If he is connected with the disappearance of Mistress Jennings, you will find her at a place called Merlin House, six leagues from Westminster and half a league from the Oxford Road.”

Here his eyes began to roll and he seemed to be under a spell.  He made strange, weird passes in the air for a time, then became rigid, his face upturned and his arms uplifted.  Betty was frightened and drew close to my side, grasping my arm.

After perhaps a minute of silence, Lilly began to speak again in low sepulchral tones:  “I see a house in the depths of a forest dark and wild.  It is surrounded by a high wall.  In the east side of the wall is a double door or gate of thick oak, which you will find locked and barred.  The house is of brick, save a tower at the southeast corner, which is of stone three stories high.  To reach the house, you must travel on the Oxford Road a distance of six leagues and two furlongs, where you will find a broken shrine, erected hundreds of years ago to the Blessed Virgin.  The shrine is on the left side of the road as you travel west, one hundred paces back, on the top of a low hill surrounded by a bleak moor.  The shrine has gone to decay, but it holds a sacred relic of the Blessed Virgin.”

Betty, who was a Catholic, crossed herself and murmured an Ave.  Lilly continued:—­