"...
"The forgiveness of sins."...
"And the Life Everlasting."...
* * * *
Anthony dropped his face forward on to his horse's mane.
CHAPTER VII
A MESSAGE FROM THE CITY
Sir Francis Walsingham sat in his private room a month after Father
Campion's death.
He had settled down again now to his work which had been so grievously
interrupted by his mission to France in connection with a new treaty
between that country and England in the previous year. The secret
detective service that he had inaugurated in England chiefly for the
protection of the Queen's person was a vast and complicated business, and
the superintendence of this, in addition to the other affairs of his
office, made him an exceedingly busy man. England was honeycombed with
mines and countermines both in the political and the religious world, and
it needed all this man's brilliant and trained faculties to keep abreast
with them. His spies and agents were everywhere; and not only in England:
they circled round Mary of Scotland like flies round a wounded creature,
seeking to settle and penetrate wherever an opening showed itself. These
Scottish troubles would have been enough for any ordinary man; but
Walsingham was indefatigable, and his agents were in every prison,
lurking round corridors in private houses, found alike in thieves'
kitchens and at gentlemen's tables.
Just at present Walsingham was anxious to give all the attention he could
to Scottish affairs; and on this wet dreary Thursday morning in January
as he sat before his bureau, he was meditating how to deal with an affair
that had come to him from the heart of London, and how if possible to
shift the conduct of it on to other shoulders.
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