"No," said Rumbald, "but there will be another batch presently, I make
no doubt."

I got rid of him at last; and rode homewards; but it was with a very
heavy heart. Not once yet had the King exercised his prerogative of
mercy; and if he yielded at the first, and that against the Jesuits whom
he had sworn to protect, was there anything in which he would resist?

My Cousin Dorothy saw in my face as I came in that something was the
matter; so I told her the truth.

"May they rest in peace," she said; and blessed herself.

* * * * *

From time to time news reached us in this kind of manner. Though we were
not a great distance from London we were in a very solitary place, away
from the high-road that ran to Cambridge; and few came our way. Even in
Puckeridge it was not known, I think, who I was, nor that I was cousin
to Mr. Jermyn; so I had no fear of Mr. Rumbald suspecting me. Green,
Berry, and Hill were all convicted of Sir Edmund's murder, through the
testimony of Bedloe, who said that he had himself seen the body at
Somerset House, and that Sir Edmund had been strangled there by priests
and others and conveyed later to the ditch in Primrose Hill where he was
found. Another fellow, too, named Miles Prance, a silversmith in Princes
Street (out of Drury Lane), who was said by Bedloe to have been privy to
the murder, in the fear of his life, and after inhuman treatment in
prison, did corroborate the story and add to it, under promise of
pardon, which he got. Green, Berry, and Hill, then, were hanged on the
tenth day of February, on the testimonies of these two; and were as