had had an eventful year, yet never yet had he come within reach of
the pursuivant. But he had largely effected this by the particular care
which he had observed with regard to Matstead, and his silence as to his
own identity. Extraordinary care, too, was observed by his friends, who
had learned by now to call him even in private by his alias; and it
appeared certain that beyond a dozen or two of discreet persons it was
utterly unsuspected that the stately bearded young gentleman named Mr.
Robert Alban--the "man of God," as, like other priests, he was commonly
called amongst the Catholics--had any connection whatever with the
hawking, hunting, and hard-riding lover of Mistress Manners. It was
known, indeed, that Mr. Robin had gone abroad years ago to be made
priest; but those who thought of him at all, or, at least as returned,
believed him sent to some other part of England, for the sake of his
father, and it was partly because of the very fact that his father was
so hot against the Papists that it had been thought safe at Rheims to
send him to Derbyshire, since this would be the very last place in which
he would be looked for.

He had avoided Matstead then--riding through it once only by night, with
strange emotions--and had spent most of his time in the south of
Derbyshire, crossing more than once over into Stafford and Chester, and
returning to Padley or to Booth's Edge once in every three or four
months. He had learned a hundred lessons in these wanderings of his.

The news that he had now brought with him was of the worst. He had heard
from Catholics in Derby that Mr. Simpson, returned again after his
banishment, recaptured a month or two ago, and awaiting trial at the
Lent Assizes, was beginning to falter. Death was a certainty for him
this time, and it appeared that he had seemed very timorous before two
or three friends who had visited him in gaol, declaring that he had done
all that a man could do, that he was being worn out by suffering and
privation, and that there was some limit, after all, to what God
Almighty should demand.

Marjorie had cried out just now, driven beyond herself at the thought of
what all this must mean for the Catholics of the countryside, many of
whom already had fallen away during the last year or two beneath the
pitiless storm of fines, suspicions, and threats--had cried out that it
was impossible that such a man as Mr. Simpson could fall; that the ruin
it would bring upon the Fait