aking to him; he heard
the very words used.

"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of
life."

Suddenly he threw back his head and said:

"In a good and righteous cause I would face death gladly without
shrinking."

The keen, flashing eyes were fixed full upon his face. The clear
voice spoke on in terse, emphatic phrases.

"Be sure of thyself, Anthony Dalaber. Put not thy hand to the
plough only to turn back. So far thou art safe. But I have come to
do a work here that is charged with peril. Thou needest have no
hand in it. Say the word, and I go forth from thy lodging and
trouble thee no more. I ask nothing. I do but take thee at thy
word. If thy heart has failed or changed, only say so. One word is
enough. There are other spirits in Oxford strong enough to stand
the test. I came first to thee, Anthony, because I love thee as
mine own soul. But I ask nothing of thee. There is peril in
harbouring such an one as I. Send me forth, and I will go. So wilt
thou be more safe."

But even as Garret spoke all the old sense of fascination which
this man had exercised upon him in London returned in full force
upon Dalaber. The brilliant eyes held him by their spell, the
fighting instinct rose hot within him. His heart had been full of
thoughts of love and human bliss; now there arose a sense of coming
battle, and the lust of fighting which is in every human heart, and
which, in a righteous cause, may be even a God-like attribute,
flamed up within him, and he cried aloud:

"I am on the Lord's side. Shall I fear what flesh can do unto me? I
will go forth in the strength of the Lord. I fear not. I will be
true, even unto death."

There was no quavering in his voice now. His face was aglow with
the passion of his earnestness.

Next moment Garret was in the midst of one of his fiery orations. A
fresh batch of pamphlets had come over from Germany. They exposed
new and wholesale corruptions which prevailed in the papal court,
and which roused the bitterest indignation amongst those who were
banded together to uphold righteousness and purity. Unlike men of
Clarke's calibre of mind, and full of the zeal which in later times
blazed out in the movement of the Reformation, Garret could not
regard the Catholic Church in its true and universal aspect,
embracing all Christian men in its fold--the one body of which
Christ is the head. He looked upon it as a corrupt organization of
man's devising, a hierarchy of