A noise of talking came out of the kitchen windows and the clash of a saucepan: the maids' heads vanished from the upper windows.
Even as Dick shut the gate he heard the sound of horses' hoofs down by the porter's lodge.

The justices were coming--the two whose names he had heard with amazement last week, as the last corroboration of the incredible rumour of his master's defection.

For these were a couple of magistrates--harmless men, indeed, as regarded their hostility to the old Faith--yet Protestants who had sat more than once on the bench in Derby to hear cases of recusancy.

Old Mrs.Marpleden had told him they were to come, and that provision must be made for their horses--Mrs.
Marpleden, the ancient housekeeper of the manor, who had gone to school for a while with the Benedictine nuns of Derby in King Henry's days.

She had shaken her head and eyed him, and then had suffered three or four tears to fall down her old cheeks.
Well, they were coming, so Dick must open the gate again, and pull the bell for the servants; and this he did, and waited, hat in hand.
Up the little straight road they came, with a servant or two behind them--the two harmless gentlemen, chattering as they rode; and Dick loathed them in his heart.
"The squire is within ?" "Yes, sir." They dismounted, and Dick held their stirrups.
"He has been to church--eh ?" Dick made no answer.