“Who goes there?” I called out softly, but I knew well enough.  ’Tis sometimes a stain on a man’s manhood, the hatred he can bear to a woman who is continually between him and his will, and his keen apprehension of her as a sort of a cat under cover beside his path.  So I knew well enough it was Catherine Cavendish, and indeed I marvelled that I had gotten thus far without meeting her.  She stepped forward with no more ado when I accosted her, and spoke, but with great caution.

“What do you, Master Wingfield?” she whispered.  “I go on my own business, an it please you, Madam,” I answered something curtly, and I have since shamed myself with the memory of it, for she was a woman.

“It pleases me not, nor my grandmother, that one of her household should go forth on any errand of mystery at such a time as this, when whispers have reached us of another insurrection,” she replied.  “Master Wingfield, I demand to know, in the name of my Grandmother Cavendish, the purpose of your riding forth in such fashion?”

“And that, Madam, I refuse to tell you,” I replied, bowing low.  “You presume too greatly on your privileges,” she burst out.  “You think because my grandmother holds you in such strange favour that she seems to forget, to forget—­”

“That I am a convict, Madam,” I finished for her, with another low bow.

“Finish it as you will, Master Wingfield,” she said haughtily, “but you think wrongly that she will countenance treason to the king in her own household, and ’tis treason that is brewing tonight.”

“Madam,” I whispered, “if you love your grandmother and value her safety, you will remain in ignorance of this.”

Then she caught me by the arm, with such a nervous ardour that never would I have known her for the Catherine Cavendish of late years.

“My God, Harry, you shall not go,” she whispered.  “I say you shall not!  I—­I—­will go to my grandmother.  I will have the militia out.  Harry, I say you shall not go!”

But then my blood was up.  “Madam,” I said, “go I shall, and if you acquaint your grandmother, ’twill be to her possible undoing, and yours and your sister’s, since the having one of the rioters in your own household will lay you open to suspicion.  Then besides, your sister’s bringing over of the arms may be traced to her if the matter be agitated.”

Then truly the feminine soul of this woman leapt to the surface with no more ado.

“Oh, my God, Harry!” she cried out.  “I care not for my grandmother, nor my sister, nor the king, nor Nathaniel Bacon, nor aught, nor aught—­I fear, I fear—­Oh, I fear lest thou be killed, Harry!”

“Lest my dead body be brought home to thy door, and the accusation of having furnished a traitor to the king be laid to thee, Madam?” I said, for not one whit believed I in her love for me.  But she only sobbed in a distracted fashion.

“Fear not, Madam,” I said, “if the militia be out, and I fall, it will go hard that I die before I have time to forswear myself yet again for the sake of thy family.  But, I pray thee, keep to thyself for the sake of all.”