At the dead of night Caspar and Tom, with four picked men from the guard, came to lead her away.  Worn out by that time, and with nothing to sustain her from within, she fancied they were going to kill her, and giving way utterly, cried and shrieked aloud.  Obdurate however, as gentle, they gave no ear to her petitions, but bore her through the western gate, and so to the brick gate in the rampart, placed her in a carriage behind six horses, and set out with her for Caerleon, where her mother lived in obscurity.  At her door they set her down, and leaving the carriage at Usk, returned to Raglan one by one in the night, mounted on the horses.  By the warders who admitted them they were supposed to be returned from distinct missions on the king’s business.

Many were the speculations in the castle as to the fate of mistress Amanda Serafina Fuller, but the common belief continued to be that she had been carried off by Satan, body and soul.

End of volume II.

START OF VOLUME III

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Newbury.

Early the next morning, after Richard had left the cottage for Raglan castle, mistress Rees was awaked by the sound of a heavy blow against her door.  When with difficulty she had opened it, Richard or his dead body, she knew not which, fell across her threshold.  Like poor Marquis, he had come to her for help and healing.

When he got out of the quarry, he made for the highroad, but missing the way the dog had brought him, had some hard work in reaching it; and long before he arrived—­at the cottage, what with his wound, his loss of blood, his double wetting, his sleeplessness after mistress Watson’s potion, want of food, disappointment and fatigue, he was in a high fever.  The last mile or two he had walked in delirium, but happily with the one dominant idea of getting help from mother Rees.  The poor woman was greatly shocked to find that the teeth of the trap had closed upon her favourite and mangled him so terribly.  A drop or two of one of her restoratives, however, soon brought him round so far that he was able to crawl to the chair on which he had sat the night before, now ages agone as it seemed, where he now sat shivering and glowing alternately, until with trembling hands the good woman had prepared her own bed for him.

‘Thou hast left thy doublet behind thee,’ she said, ’and I warrant me the cake I gave thee in the pouch thereof!  Hadst thou eaten of that, thou hadst not come to this pass.’

But Richard scarcely heard her voice.  His one mental consciousness was the longing desire to lay his aching head on the pillow, and end all effort.