“What?” said Paslew, in a voice that made the culprits quake.  “I pardon nothing.  What means this silence?”

“Please your reverence,” said Will, now advancing from the rear, his rhetorical flourishes somewhat curtailed, and his confidence thereby wonderfully abated, “the first signal was our own, lighted by an incendiary, to wit, and here we bring him to your highness’ reverence for judgment.  We ordered the rope and the broad beam to be ready by daybreak.”

It were idle to paint the astonishment and dismay which this short narrative produced.  Paslew immediately saw the dangers by which he was involved.  He was, by this desperate and unfortunate act, at once committed to the measures from which he had hitherto kept aloof, and he must now stand foremost in the cause, or tamely submit to the infuriate vengeance which this overt act of rebellion would inevitably hasten.  He had hoped that, sheltered in this quiet nook, he should escape without being made a party in the contest, and rest secure until hotter heads and lighter brains had fought the battles that would leave him in possession of the spoil.  If the king’s party were triumphant, he fancied that, by seeming to take little or no part in the hostilities then abroad, his house might be spared in the general wreck that would ensue; but all these schemes of deep-laid policy and ambition were in a moment dissipated.  No time was to be lost.  The whole country would instantly be in array, and the beacon-light of Pendle proclaim Paslew as the source and instigator of this second rebellion.  It would be in vain to stay the rising.  Some enemy of his house, or some desperate adventurer, wishful to further his own schemes at another’s expense, was doubtless the author of this mischief.  The whole was but the discovery of a moment.  Almost before the dark thought was visible on the brow he cried out—­

“Bring forward the traitor!”

But Ralph, on the first hearing of this accusation, strode forward, even to the table, where sat the awful conclave astonished at his temerity.  He stood calmly erect, surveying his judges with a countenance scarcely moved from its usually hard and stolid expression.

“If it be true,” cried he, “as these idlers do aver, I am here to answer.  If it be false, they must look to it.”

The abbot frowned at this presumptuous speech.

“Who art thou?”

“Marry, an ass ridden by fools.”

“Knave, see thou be discreet and respectful in thine answers.  There be whipping-posts for knaves, and stocks for the correction of fools.”

“Why, if it be for the matter of my name, I trow, ’tis of an honest Christian-like and well-conditioned flavour; comes out of the mouth sharp as a beer-spigot.  Men call me Ralph.”

“And from whence?” said the abbot, impatiently.

“These knaves of thy breeding can tell best.  ’Tis a road I never before travelled; and, by your grace’s favour, I do not mean to jog on it again.”