’Would that day were here, Dorothy!  But what can honest people do, while St. George and St. Michael are themselves at odds?’

’Mayhap it but seemeth so, and they but dispute across the Yule-log,’ said Dorothy; ’and men down here, like the dogs about the fire, take it up, and fall a-worrying each other.  But the end will crown all.’

‘Discrown some, I fear,’ said Richard to himself.

As they reached the farm-house, it was growing light.  Upstill fetched his dame from her bed in the hayloft, and Richard told her, in formal and authoritative manner, what he required of her.

‘I will search her!’ answered the dame from between her closed teeth.

‘Mistress Vaughan,’ said Richard, ’if she offer thee evil words, give her the same lesson thou gavest her husband.  If all tales be true, she is not beyond the need of it.—­Search her well, mistress Upstill, but show her no rudeness, for she hath the power to avenge it in a parlous manner, having gone to school to my lord Herbert of Raglan.  Not the less must thou search her well, else will I look upon thee as no better than one of the malignants.’

The woman cast a glance of something very like hate, but mingled with fear, upon Dorothy.

‘I like not the business, captain Heywood,’ she said.

’Yet the business must be done, mistress Upstill.  And hark’ee, for every paper thou findest upon her, I will give thee its weight in gold.  I care not what it is.  Bring it hither, and the dame’s butter-scales withal.’

‘I warrant thee, captain!’ she returned. ’—­Come with me, mistress, and show what thou hast about thee.  But, good sooth, I would the sun were up!’

She led the way to the rick-yard, and round towards the sunrise.  It was the month of August, and several new ricks already stood facing the east, yellow, and beginning to glow like a second dawn.  Between the two, mistress Upstill began her search, which she made more thorough than agreeable.  Dorothy submitted without complaint.

At last, as she was giving up the quest in despair, her eyes or her fingers discovered a little opening inside the prisoner bodice, and there sure enough was a pocket, and in the pocket a slip of paper!  She drew it out in triumph.

‘That is nothing,’ said Dorothy:  ‘give it me.’  And with flushed face she made a snatch at it.

‘Holy Mary!’ cried dame Upstill, whose protestantism was of doubtful date, and thrust the paper into her own bosom.

‘That paper hath nothing to do with state affairs, I protest,’ expostulated Dorothy.  ’I will give thee ten times its weight in gold for it.’

But mistress Upstill had other passions besides avarice, and was not greatly tempted by the offer.  She took Dorothy by the arm, and said,

‘An’ thou come not quickly, I will cry that all the parish shall hear me.’

’I tell thee, mistress Upstill, on the oath of a Christian woman, it is but a private letter of mine own, and beareth nothing upon affairs.  Prithee read a word or two, and satisfy thyself.’