t. A rumour had come to her ears
that the talk in the town was of the expected arrival of a new priest to
take Mr. Garlick's place for the present, and every stranger was
scrutinised. So he had taken her advice; he had left Derby again
immediately, and had slowly travelled north; then, coming round about
from the north, after leaving his friend, saying mass here and there
where he could, crossing into Yorkshire even as far west as Wakefield,
he had come at last, through this wet November day, along the Derwent
valley and up to Booth's Edge, where he arrived after sunset, to find
the hall filled with folks to greet him.

He was smiling himself, though his eyes were full of tears, by the time
that he had done giving his blessings. Mr. John FitzHerbert was come up
from Padley, where he lived now for short times together, greyer than
ever, but with the same resolute face. Mistress Alice Babington was
there, still serene looking, but with a new sorrow in her eyes; and,
clinging to her, a thin, pale girl all in black, who only two months
before had lost both daughter and husband; for the child had died
scarcely a week or two before her father, Anthony Babington, had died
miserably on the gallows near St. Giles' Fields, where he had so often
met his friends after dark. It was a ghastly tale, told in fragments to
Robin here and there during his journeyings by men in taverns, before
whom he must keep a brave face. And a few farmers were there, old Mr.
Merton among them, come in to welcome the son of the Squire of Matstead,
returned under a feigned name, unknown even to his father, and there,
too, was honest Dick Sampson, come up from Dethick to see his old
master. So here, in the hall he knew so well, himself splashed with red
marl from ankle to shoulder, still cloaked and spurred, one by one these
knelt before him, beginning with Marjorie herself, and ending with the
youngest farm-boy, who breathed heavily as he knelt down and got up
round-eyed and staring.

"And his Reverence will hear confessions," proclaimed Marjorie to the
multitude, "at eight o'clock to-night; and he will say mass and give
holy communion at six o'clock to-morrow morning."

II

He had to hear that night, after supper, and before he went to keep his
engagement in the chapel-room, the entire news of the county; and, in
his turn, to tell his own adventures. The company sat together before
the great hall-fire, to take the dessert, since there would have b