's rooms; the ground was soaking
with the rains of yesterday, but he cared nothing for that; and, as the
riding party turned up the little ascent that led beneath the
churchyard, Robin, on the other side of the wall, was keeping between
the tombstones to see, and not be seen.

It was within an hour of dawn, at that time when the sky begins to
glimmer with rifts above the two horizons, showing light enough at least
to distinguish faces. It was such a light as that in which he had seen
the deer looking at him motionless as he rode home with Dick. Yet the
three who now rode up towards him were so muffled about the faces that
he feared he would not know them. They were men, all three of them; and
he could make out valises strapped to the saddle of each; but, what
seemed strange, they did not speak as they came; and it appeared as if
they wished to make no more noise than was necessary, since one of them,
when his horse set his foot upon the cobblestones beside the lych-gate,
pulled him sharply off them.

And then, just as they rounded the angle of the wall where the boy
crouched peeping, the man that rode in the middle, sighed as if with
relief, and pulled the cloak that was about him, so that the collar fell
from his face, and at the same time turned to his companion on his
right, and said something in a low voice.

But the boy heard not a word; for he found himself staring at the
thin-faced young priest from whom he had received Holy Communion at
Padley. It was but for an instant; for the man to whom the priest spoke
answered in the same low voice, and the other pulled his cloak again
round his mouth.

Yet the look was enough. The sight, once more, of this servant of God,
setting out again upon his perilous travels--seen at such a moment, when
the boy's judgment hung in the balance (as he thought); this one single
reminder of what a priest could do in these days of sorrow, and of what
God called on him to do--the vision, for it was scarcely less, all
things considered, of a life such as this--presented, so to say, in this
single scene of a furtive and secret ride before the dawn, leaving
Padley soon after midnight--this, falling on a soul that already leaned
that way, finished that for which Marjorie had prayed, and against which
the lad himself had fought so fiercely.

* * * * *

Half an hour later he stood by his father's bed, looking down on him
without fear.

"Father," he said,