Letting himself drift with the tide, and contenting himself with keeping the prow in the right direction, Cuthbert drifted on his way quite as fast as he cared to.  He had not often been as far up the stream as this, since business always took him down towards the shipping in the mouth of the river.  He had never before gone higher up than the Temple Stairs, and now as he drifted past these and saw the fine pile of Westminster rising before his eyes, he felt a thrill of admiration and awe, and turned in his seat the better to observe and admire.

Westminster was almost like another town in those days, divided from the busy walled city of London by fields and gardens and fine mansions standing in their own grounds.  On the south side of the river the houses were few and far between, and save at Southwark, hardly any attempt at regular building had been made.  Past the great Palace of Whitehall and Westminster, with its Parliament Houses rising majestic against the darkening sky, drifted the lonely little boat.  And then Cuthbert took his oars and pulled for the southern bank; for he knew that Lambeth was not very much farther away, and he recalled to mind the directions of the priest, how to find it and know it.

Trees fringed the southern bank here, leafless at this season, but still imparting a certain dark dreariness to the scene.  The hoot of an owl occasionally broke the silence, and sent light shivers through Cuthbert’s frame.  He was not free from superstition, and the evil-omened bird was no friend of his.  He would rather not have heard its harsh note just at this time; and he could have wished that the river did not look so inky black, or that the trees did not cast such weird shadows.

But the tide ran strong beneath the overhanging bank, and Cuthbert was carried onwards without any effort of his own.  There was something just a little uncanny in this swift force.  It reminded Cuthbert of relentless destiny sweeping him onward whether or not he would go.

But it was too late to consider or turn back even if such had been his desire.  Already he began to see white gleams as of stone work along the water’s edge.  The willow trees came to an end; a wall bounded the river for fifty yards or more, and then there arose before his eyes the structure of the lonely old house, guarded by its giant elms—­a house seeming to be actually built upon the water itself, one door, as Cuthbert had been told, opening upon the flight of steps which at high water were almost covered.

It was well nigh high water now, and Cuthbert could bring the prow of his boat to within a foot of the door.  There were rings all along the topmost step for the mooring of small craft, and he quickly made fast his wherry and stood at the iron-clamped portal.