ear; I heard him call out. I was walking in the hall with
Janet to keep ourselves warm. But when I ran in he was sitting down, and
you were standing. What was the matter?"

"Alice," said the girl earnestly, "I wish you had not come in. He is
very heart-broken, I think. He would have told me more, I think. It is
about his son."

"His son! Why, he--"

"Yes; I know that. And he would not see him if he came back. He has had
his magistrate's commission; and he will be true to it. But he is
heart-broken for all that. He has not really lost the Faith, I think."

"Why, my dear; that is foolish. He is very hot in Derby, I hear, against
the Papists. There was a poor woman who could not pay her fines; and--"

Marjorie waved it aside.

"Yes; he would be very hot; but for all that, there is his son Robin you
know--and his memories. And Robin has not written to him for six months.
That would be about the time when he told him he was to be a
magistrate."

Then Marjorie told her of the whole that had passed, and of his mention
of the FitzHerberts.

"And what he meant by that," she said, "I do not know; but I will tell
them."

* * * * *

She was pondering deeply all the way as she rode home. Mistress Alice
was one of those folks who so long as they are answered in words are
content; and Marjorie so answered her. And all the while she thought
upon Robin, and his passionate old father, and attempted to understand
the emotions that fought in the heart that had so disclosed itself to
her--its aged obstinacy, its loyalty and its confused honourableness.
She knew very well that he would do what he conceived to be his duty
with all the more zeal if it were an unpleasant duty; and she thanked
God that it was not for a good while yet that the lad would come home a
priest.

CHAPTER VIII

I

The warning which she had had with regard to her friends, and which she
wrote on to them at once, received its fulfilment within a very few
weeks. Mr. John, who was on the eve of departure for London again to
serve his brother there, who was back again in the Fleet by now, wrote
that he knew very well that they were all under suspicion, that he had
sent on to his son the message she had given, but that he hoped they
would yet weather the storm.

"And as to yourself, Mistress Marjorie," he wrote, "this makes it all
the more necessary that Booth's Edge should not be suspected; for what
will our men do if