As I came up into the Strand, I saw before me what appeared to be the tail of a great concourse of people, and heard the murmur of their voices; and, mending my pace a little, I soon came up with them.  I went along for a little, trying to hear what they were saying upon the affair, and to learn what the matter was; for by now the street was one pack of folk all moving together.  Little by little, then, I began to hear that someone had been strangled, and that “he was found with his neck broken,” and then that “his own sword was run through his heart,” and words of that kind.

Now I had heard talk before that Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was run away with a woman, and to avoid the payment of his debts, which, if it were true, were certainly a very strange happening at such a time, since he was the magistrate before whom Oates had laid his information; but six days were gone by, and I had not thought very much of it, for his running away could not now in any way affect the information that had been laid.  He was a very gentle man, though melancholy; and, though a good Protestant, troubled no man that was of another religion than himself—­neither Papist nor Independent.

But when I heard the people about me speaking in this manner, the name of Sir Edmund came to my mind; and I asked a fellow that was tramping near me, who it was that was strangled and where the body was.  But he turned on me with such a burst of oaths, that I thought it best to draw no more attention to myself, and presently slipped away.  Then I thought myself of a little rising ground, a good bit in advance, whence, perhaps I might be able to see something of what was passing; and I made my way across the street, to a lane that led round on the north.  As I came across, in the fringes of the crowd, I saw a minister walking, in his cassock; so I saluted him courteously, and asked what the matter was.

He looked at me with an agitated face, and said nothing:  his lips worked, and he was very pale, yet it seemed to me with anger:  so I asked him again; and this time he answered.

“Sir, I do not know who you are,” he said.  “But it is Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey who has been foully murdered by the Papists.  He hath been found on Primrose Hill, and we are taking him to his house.  I do not know, sir—­”

But I was gone; and up the lane as fast as I could run.  All that I had heard, all that I had feared, all even that I had dreamed, was being fulfilled.  The links were forging swiftly.  I do not know, even now as I write, how it was that Sir Edmund met his end, whether he had killed himself, as I think—­for he was of a melancholiac disposition, as was his father and his grandfather before him—­or whether, as indeed I think possible, he was murdered by the very man who swore so many Catholic lives away, by way of giving colour to his own designs—­for if a man will swear away twenty lives, what should hinder him from taking one?  One thing only I know, that no Catholic, whether old or young, Jesuit or not, saint or sinner, had any act or part in it; and on that I would lay down my own life.