shouldered arquebuses did not look like those of huntsmen. Mary bounded in her saddle, she looked round at her little suite with a glance of exultation in her eye, which said as plainly as words, 'My brave friends, the hour has come!' and she quickened her steed, expecting, no doubt, that she might have to outride Sir Amias in order to join them.
One gentleman came forward from the rest. He held a parchment in his hand, and as soon as he was alongside of the Queen thus read:-
'Mary, late Queen of Scots and Queen Dowager of France, I, Thomas Gorges, attaint thee of high treason and of compassing the life of our most Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth, in company with Antony Babington, John Ballard, Chidiock Tichborne, Robert Barnwell, and others.'
Mary held up her hands, and raised her eyes to Heaven, and a protest was on her lips, but Gorges cut it short with, 'It skills not denying it, madam. The proofs are in our hands. I have orders to conduct you to Tickhill, while seals are put on your effects.'
'That there may be proofs of your own making,' said the Queen, with dignity. 'I have experience of that mode of judgment. So, Sir Amias Paulett, the chase you lured me to was truly of a poor hunted doe whom you think you have run down at last. A worthy chase indeed, and of long continuance!'
'I do but obey my orders, madam,' said Paulett, gloomily.
'Oh ay, and so does the sleuth-hound,' said Mary.
'Your Grace must be pleased to ride on with me,' said Mr. Gorges, laying his hand on her bridle.
'What are you doing with those gentlemen?' cried Mary, sharply reining in her horse, as she saw Nau and Curll surrounded by the armed men.
'They will be dealt with after her Majesty's pleasure,' returned Paulett.
Mary dropped her rein and threw up her hands with a gesture of despair, but as Gorges was leading her away, she turned on her saddle, and raised her voice to call out, 'Farewell, my true and faithful servants! Betide what may, your mistress will remember you in her prayers. Curll, we will take care of your wife.'
And she waved her hand to them as they were made, with a strong guard, to ride off in the direction of Lichfield. All the way to Tickhill, whither she was conducted with Gorges and Paulett on either side of her horse, Cis could hear her pleading for consideration for poor Barbara Curll, for whose sake she forgot her own dignity and became a suppliant.
Sir Walter Ashton, a dull heavy-looking country gentleman of burly form and ruddy countenance, stood at his door, and somewhat clownishly offered his services to hand her from her horse.
She submitted passively till she had reached the upper chamber which had been prepared for her, and there, turning on the three gentlemen, demanded the meaning of this treatment.
'You will soon know, madam,' said Paulett. 'I am sorry that thus it should be.'
'Thus!' repeated Mary, scornfully. 'What means this?'
'It means, madam,' said Gorges, a ruder man of less feeling even than Paulett, 'that your practices with recusants and seminary priests have been detected. The traitors are in the Counter, and will shortly be brought to judgment for the evil purposes which have been frustrated by the mercy of Heaven.'
'It is well if treason against my good sister's person have been detected and frustrated,' said Mary; 'but how doth that concern me?'
'That, madam, the papers at Chartley will show,' returned Gorges. 'Meantime you will remain here, till her Majesty's pleasure be known.'
'Where, then, are my women and my servants?' inquired the Queen.
'Your Grace will be attended by the servants of Sir Walter Ashton.'
'Gentlemen, this is not seemly,' said Mary, the colour coming hotly into her face. 'I know it is not the will of my cousin, the Queen of England, that I should remain here without any woman to attend me, nor any change of garments. You are exceeding your commission, and she shall hear of it.'
Sir Amias Paulett here laid his hand on Gorges' arm, and after exchanging a few words with him, said-
'Madam, this young lady, Mistress Talbot, being simple, and of a loyal house, may remain with you for the present. For the rest, seals are put on all your effects at Chartley, and nothing can be removed from thence, but what is needful will be supplied by my Lady Ashton. I bid your Grace farewell, craving your pardon for what may have been hasty in this.'
Mary stood in the centre of the floor, full of her own peculiar injured dignity, not answering, but making a low ironical reverence. Mary Seaton fell on her knees, clung to the Queen's dress, and declared that while she lived, she would not leave her mistress.
'Endure this also, ma mie,' said the Queen, in French. 'Give them no excuse for using violence. They would not scruple-' and as a demonstration to hinder French-speaking was made by the gentlemen, 'Fear not for me, I shall not be alone.'
'I understand your Grace and obey,' said Mary Seaton, rising, with a certain bitterness in her tone, which made Mary say- 'Ah! why must jealousy mar the fondest affection? Remember, it is their choice, not mine, my Seaton, friend of my youth. Bear my loving greetings to all. And take care of poor Barbara!'
'Madam, there must be no private messages,' said Paulett.
'I send no messages save what you yourself may hear, sir,' replied the Queen. 'My greetings to my faithful servants, and my entreaty that all care and tenderness may be shown to Mrs. Curll.'
'I will bear them, madam,' said the knight, 'and so I commend you to God's keeping, praying that He may send you repentance. Believe me, madam, I am sorry that this has been put upon me.'
To this Mary only replied by a gesture of dismissal. The three gentlemen drew back, a key grated in the lock, and the mother and daughter were left alone.
To Cicely it was a terrible hopeless sound, and even to her mother it was a lower depth of wretchedness. She had been practically a captive for nearly twenty years. She had been insulted, watched, guarded, coerced, but never in this manner locked up before.
She clasped her hands together, dropped on her knees at the table that stood by her, and hid her face. So she continued till she was roused by the sound of Cicely's sobs. Frightened and oppressed, and new to all terror and sorrow, the girl had followed her example in kneeling, but the very attempt to pray brought on a fit of weeping, and the endeavour to restrain what might disturb the Queen only rendered the sobs more choking and strangling, till at last Mary heard, and coming towards her, sat down on the floor, gathered her into her arms, and kissing her forehead, said, 'Poor bairnie, and did she weep for her mother? Have the sorrows of her house come on her?'
'O mother, I could not help it! I meant to have comforted you,' said Cicely, between her sobs.
'And so thou dost, my child. Unwittingly they have left me that which was most precious to me.'
There was consolation in the fondness of the loving embrace, at least to such sorrows as those of the maiden; and Queen Mary had an inalienable power of charming the will and affections of those in contact with her, so that insensibly there came into Cicely's heart a sense that, so far from weeping, she should rejoice at being the one creature left to console her mother.
'And,' she said by and by, looking up with a smile, 'they must go to the bottom of the old well to find anything.'
'Hush, lassie. Never speak above thy breath in a prison till thou know'st whether walls have ears. And, apropos, let us examine what sort of a prison they have given us this time.'
So saying Mary rose, and leaning on her daughter's arm, proceeded to explore her new abode. Like her apartment at the Lodge, it was at the top of the house, a fashion not uncommon when it was desirable to make the lower regions defensible; but, whereas she had always hitherto been placed in the castles of the highest nobility, she was now in that of a country knight of no great wealth or refinement, and, moreover, taken by surprise.
So the plenishing was of the simplest. The walls were covered with tapestry so faded that the pattern could hardly be detected. The hearth yawned dark and dull, and by it stood one chair with a moth- eaten cushion. A heavy oaken table and two forms were in the middle of the room, and there was the dreary, fusty smell of want of habitation. The Queen, whose instincts for fresh air were always a distress to her ladies, sprang to the mullioned window, but the heavy lattice defied all her efforts.
'Let us see the rest of our dominions,' she said, turning to a door, which led to a still more gloomy bedroom, where the only articles of furniture were a great carved bed, with curtains of some undefined dark colour, and an oaken chest. The window was a mere slit, and even more impracticable than that of the outer room. However, this did not seem to horrify Mary so much as it did her daughter. 'They cannot mean to keep us here long,' she said;
