“At Bridgefield, under my wife’s ward, having his bruises attended to.  I would not bring him up here till I knew what my Lord would have done with him.  He is but a child, and no doubt was wrought with by sweet looks, and I trust my Lord will not be hard with him.”

“If my father had hearkened to me, he should never have been here,” said Francis.  “His father was an honest man, but his mother was, I find, a secret recusant, and when she died, young Antony was quite old enough to have sucked in the poison.  You did well to keep him, Richard; he ought not to return hither again, either in ward or at liberty.”

“If he were mine, I would send him to school,” said Richard, “where the masters and the lads would soon drive out of him all dreams about captive princesses and seminary priests to boot.  For, Cousin Francis, I would have you to know that my children say there is a rumour that this woman Tibbott the huckstress hath been seen in a doublet and hose near Chesterfield.”

“The villain!  When is she looked for here again?”

“Anon, I should suppose, judging by the boy leaving this charge with Cis in case she should come while he is gone to Chatsworth.”

“We will take order as to that,” said Francis, compressing his lips; “I know you will take heed, cousin, that she, or he, gets no breath of warning.  I should not wonder if it were Parsons himself!” and he unfolded the scroll with the air of a man seeking to confirm his triumph.

“Can you make anything of it?” asked Richard, struck by its resemblance to another scroll laid up among his wife’s treasures.

“I cannot tell, they are not matters to be read in an hour,” said Francis Talbot, “moreover, there is one in use for the English traitors, her friends, and another for the French.  This looks like the French sort.  Let me see, they are read by taking the third letter in each second word.”  Francis Talbot, somewhat proud of his proficiency, and perfectly certain of the trustworthiness of his cousin Richard, went on puzzling out the ciphered letters, making Richard set each letter down as he picked it out, and trying whether they would make sense in French or English.  Both understood French, having learned it in their page days, and kept it up by intercourse with the French suite.  Francis, however, had to try two or three methods, which, being a young man, perhaps he was pleased to display, and at last he hit upon the right, which interpreted the apparent gibberish of the scroll—­excepting that the names of persons were concealed under soubriquets which Francis Talbot could not always understand—­but the following sentence by and by became clear:—­ “Quand le matelot vient des marais, un feu peut eclater dans la meute et dans la melee”—­“When the sailor lands from the fens, a fire might easily break out in the dog-kennel, and in the confusion” (name could not be read) “could carry off the tercel gentle.”