“They have to prove it—­let them.”

“My lord, the old hag who sold you the phial, as she says, yet lives, and I fear prates.”

“She shall do so no longer.  Get a party of half a dozen of your tenderest lambs ready for secret service.  We will start two hours before dawn, when all the world is fast asleep.  See that you are all ready and call me.”

All lonely stood the hut—­in the tangled brake—­where dwelt a sinful but repentant woman.  For one had broken in upon her life, and had awakened a conscience which seemed almost non-existent until he came—­our Martin.  And this night she tosses on her bed uneasily.

“Would that he might come again,” she says.  “I would fain hear more of Him who can save, as he said, even me.”

She mutters no longer spells, but prayers.  The stone seems removed from the door of that sepulchre, her heart.  Towards morning sleep, long wooed in vain, comes over her—­and she dozes.

It wants but an hour to dawn, but the night is at its darkest.  The stars still drift over the western sky, but in the east it is cloudy, and no morning watch from his tower could spy the dawning day.

Eight men emerge from the deep shade of the tangled wood.  In silence they approach the hut, and first they tie the door outside, so that the inmate cannot open it.

“Which way is the wind?” whispers the leader.

“In the east.”

“Fire the house on that side.”

They have with them a dark lantern, from which a torch is fired and applied to the roof of light reeds on the windward side.  We draw a veil over the quarter of an hour which followed.  It was what the French call un mauvais quart d’heure.

The sun had arisen for some hours when the solitude of the forest was broken by the tread of three strangers—­travellers, who trod one of its most verdant glades.  The one was a brother preacher of the order of Saint Francis.  The second, a knight clad in hunting attire.  The third, the mayor, the headman of the borough of Hamelsham.

“The cottage lies here away,” said the first.  “We shall see the roof when we turn the end of the avenue of beeches.”

“Do you not smell an odour unusual to the forest?”

“The scent of something burnt or burning?”

“I have perceived it.”

“Ah, here it is,” and the three stopped short.  They had just turned the corner to which they had alluded.  A thin smoke still arose from the spot where the cottage had stood.

They all paused; then, without a word, hurried on ward by a common impulse.  They only found the smoking embers of the dwelling they had come to seek.

“This is Drogo’s doing,” said Ralph of Herstmonceux.

“Could he have heard of our intentions?” said the mayor.

“No, but—­he might have learned that poor Madge was a penitent, and then—­” said Martin.

“Well, our work is done, and as the country is not over safe so near the lion’s den—­”