ial fire for his past sins!

He had confessed and done penance for the disgraceful acts of which he had
been guilty, and he had been received into the refuge the Roman Church was
ready to offer to him.

At this time she was making every effort to strengthen her outposts, and to
prepare for the struggle which at any moment she might be called upon to
make to regain her coveted ascendency in England.

The seminary founded at Douay by a certain Dr Allen, a fine scholar, who
was educated at Oxford, was much resorted to by persecuted Catholics who
sought a refuge there. Or by men like Ambrose Gifford, who, obliged to
leave the country under the shadow of a crime committed, were glad to throw
themselves into the arms ready to receive them, and, as they would have
expressed it, find pardon and peace by fasting and penance in the bosom of
the Catholic Church. Doubtless, the great majority of those who gathered at
Douay at this time were devout and persecuted members of the Church, from
the bondage of which Elizabeth had delivered her country, with the hearty
approbation of her loyal subjects.

But, black sheep like Ambrose Gifford went thither to be washed and
outwardly reformed; and he, being a man of considerable ability and
shrewdness, had after a time of probation been despatched to England to
beat up recruits and to bring back word how the Catholic cause was
prospering there.

He had, therefore, every reason to wish to take with him his own boy, whose
fine physique and noble air he had noted with pride as he had, unseen,
watched him for the last few weeks when haunting the neighbourhood like an
evil spirit.

He would do him credit, and reward all the pains taken to educate him and
bring him up as a good Catholic.

The motives which prompted him to this were mixed, and revenge against his
wife was perhaps the dominant feeling. She loved that boy better than
anything on earth; she would bring him up in the faith of the Reformed
Church, and teach him, probably, to hate his father.

He would, at any rate, get possession of this her idol, and punish her for
the words she had spoken to him by the porch of the farm, on that summer
evening now more than two weeks ago.

Ambrose Gifford had deceived Mary from the first, professing to be a
Protestant while it served his purpose to win favour in the household of
the Earl of Leicester, but in reality he was a Catholic, and only waited
the turn of the tide to declare himself.