“Excellency, she is here, though I had difficulty enough in persuading her to come, for I found her in bed and out of humour.”

“Peace to your difficulties.  Where is she?”

“In the small inner room, Excellency.”

“Good, then see that no one disturbs us, and—­stay, when she goes out follow her and note her movements till you trace her home.”

The man saluted, and Montalvo passed upstairs into the inner room, carefully shutting both doors behind him.  The place was unlighted, but through the large stone-mullioned window the rays of the full moon poured brightly, and by them, seated in a straight-backed chair, Montalvo saw a draped form.  There was something forbidding, something almost unnatural, in the aspect of this sombre form perched thus upon a chair in expectant silence.  It reminded him—­for he had a touch of inconvenient imagination—­of an evil bird squatted upon the bough of a dead tree awaiting the dawn that it might go forth to devour some appointed prey.

“Is that you, Mother Meg?” he asked in tones from which most of the jocosity had vanished.  “Quite like old times at The Hague—­isn’t it?”

The moonlit figure turned its head, for he could see the light shine upon the whites of the eyes.

“Who else, Excellency,” said a voice hoarse and thick with rheum, a voice like the croak of a crow, “though it is little thanks to your Excellency.  Those must be strong who can bathe in Rhine water through a hole in the ice and take no hurt.”

“Don’t scold, woman,” he answered, “I have no time for it.  If you were ducked yesterday, it served you right for losing your cursed temper.  Could you not see that I had my own game to play, and you were spoiling it?  Must I be flouted before my men, and listen while you warn a lady with whom I wish to stand well against me?”

“You generally have a game to play, Excellency, but when it ends in my being first robbed and then nearly drowned beneath the ice—­well, that is a game which Black Meg does not forget.”

“Hush, mother, you are not the only person with a memory.  What was the reward?  Twelve florins?  Well, you shall have them, and five more; that’s good pay for a lick of cold water.  Are you satisfied?”

“No, Excellency.  I wanted the life, that heretic’s life.  I wanted to baste her while she burned, or to tread her down while she was buried.  I have a grudge against the woman because I know, yes, because I know,” she repeated fiercely, “that if I do not kill her she will try to kill me.  Her husband and her young son were burnt, upon my evidence mostly, but this is the third time she has escaped me.”

“Patience, mother, patience, and I dare say that everything will come right in the end.  You have bagged two of the family—­Papa heretic and Young Hopeful.  Really you should not grumble if the third takes a little hunting, or wonder that in the meanwhile you are not popular with Mama.  Now, listen.  You know the young woman whom it was necessary that I should humour yesterday.  She is rich, is she not?”