g that the next
man, too, was listening.

"Aye, sir."

"Can you tell me if my friend Mr. Bourgoign lodges in the house, or
without the gates?"

"Mr. Bourgoign, sir? A friend of yours?"

"I hope so," said Robin, smiling, and keeping at least within the letter
of truth.

The man mused a moment.

"It is possible he might help you, sir. He lodges in the house; but he
comes sometimes to see a woman that is sick here."

Robin demanded where she lived.

"At the last house, sir--a little beyond the rest. She is one of her
Grace's kitchen-women. They moved her out here, thinking it might be the
fever she had."

This was plainly a communicative fellow; but the priest thought it wiser
not to take too much interest. He tossed the man a coin and rode on.

* * * * *

The last house was a little better built than the others, and stood
further back from the road. Robin dismounted here, and, with a nod to
Mr. Arnold, who was keeping his countenance admirably, walked up to the
door and knocked on it. It was opened instantly, as if he were expected,
but the woman's face fell when she saw him.

"Is Mr. Bourgoign within?" asked the priest.

The woman glanced over him before answering, and then out to where the
horses waited.

"No, sir," she said at last. "We were looking for him just now...."
(She broke off.) "He is coming now," she said.

Robin turned, and there, walking down the road, was an old man, leaning
on a stick, richly and soberly dressed in black, wearing a black beaver
hat on his head. A man-servant followed him at a little distance.

The priest saw that here was an opportunity ready-made; but there was
one more point on which he must satisfy himself first, and what seemed
to him an inspiration came to his mind.

"He looks like a minister," he said carelessly.

A curious veiled look came over the woman's face. Robin made a bold
venture. He smiled full in her face.

"You need not fear," he said. "I quarrel with no man's religion;" and,
at the look in her face at this, he added: "You are a Catholic, I
suppose? Well, I am one too. And so, I suppose, is Mr. Bourgoign."

The woman smiled tremulously, and the fear left her eyes.

"Yes, sir," she said. "All the friends of her Grace are Catholics, I
think."

He nodded to her again genially. Then, turning, he went to meet the
apothecary, who was now not thirty yards away.

* * * * *

It was a p