One of them, a slight man, made a step forward and said, “The Queen hath dropped her kerchief.  Mayhap the young gentlewoman will restore it?”

“She will do more than that!” said Antony, drawing her into the midst of them.  “Dost not know her, Langston?  She is her sacred Majesty’s own born, true, and faithful subject, the Lady—­”

“Hush, my friend; thou art ever over outspoken with thy names,” returned the other, evidently annoyed at Babington’s imprudence.

“I tell thee, she is one of us,” replied Antony impatiently.  “How is the Queen to know of her friends if we name them not to her?”

“Are these her friends?” asked Cicely, looking round on the five figures in the leathern coats and yeomen’s heavy buskins and shoes, and especially at the narrow face and keen pale eyes of Langston.

“Ay, verily,” said one, whom Cicely could see even under his disguise to be a slender, graceful youth.  “By John Eyre’s favour have we come together here to gaze on the true and lawful mistress of our hearts, the champion of our faith, in her martyrdom.”  Then taking the kerchief from Langston’s hand, Babington kissed it reverently, and tore it into five pieces, which he divided among himself and his fellows, saying, “This fair mistress shall bear witness to her sacred Majesty that we—­Antony Babington, Chidiock Tichborne, Cuthbert Langston, John Charnock, John Savage—­regard her as the sole and lawful Queen of England and Scotland, and that as we have gone for her sake into the likeness of the valley of the shadow of death, so will we meet death itself and stain this linen with our best heart’s blood rather than not bring her again to freedom and the throne!”

Then with the most solemn oath each enthusiastically kissed the white token, and put it in his breast, but Langston looked with some alarm at the girl, and said to Babington, “Doth this young lady understand that you have put our lives into her hands?”

“She knows! she knows!  I answer for her with my life,” said Antony.

“Let her then swear to utter no word of what she has seen save to the Queen,” said Langston, and Cicely detected a glitter in that pale eye, and with a horrified leap of thought, recollected how easy it would be to drag her away into one of those black pools, beyond all ken.

“Oh save me, Antony!” she cried clinging to his arm.

“No one shall touch you.  I will guard you with my life!” exclaimed the impulsive young man, feeling for the sword that was not there.

“Who spoke of hurting the foolish wench?” growled Savage; but Tichborne said, “No one would hurt you, madam; but it is due to us all that you should give us your word of honour not to disclose what has passed, save to our only true mistress.”

“Oh yes! yes!” cried Cicely hastily, scarcely knowing what passed her lips, and only anxious to escape from that gleaming eye of Langston, which had twice before filled her with a nameless sense of the necessity of terrified obedience.  “Oh! let me go.  I hear my father’s voice.”