followed the others a few yards behind.

"You saw her?" said his father.

Christopher nodded.

"Yes," he said, "I must speak to you, sir, before I tell the others."

"Come to me when you are dressed, then. Supper will be in an hour from
now;" and he looked at his son with a kind of sharp expectancy.

The courtyard was empty as they passed through, but half a dozen
servants stood crowded in the little flagged passage that led from it
into the kitchen, and watched Ralph and his mother with an awed interest
as they came out from the hall. Mr. Ralph had come down from the heart
of life, as they knew; had been present at the crowning of Anne Boleyn a
week before, had mixed with great folks; and what secrets of State might
there not be in that little strapped bag that his brother carried behind
him?

When the two first had disappeared, the servants broke into talk, and
went back to the kitchen.

* * * * *

Lady Torridon, with her elder son and the chaplain, had to wait a few
minutes on the dais in the hall an hour later, before the door under the
musicians' gallery opened, and the other two came in from the master's
chamber. Sir James looked a little anxious as he came across the clean
strewed rushes, past the table at the lower end where the household sat,