e. Then the tears surged
up, her whole being relaxed, and she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Marjorie," said the grave voice, as steady as it had ever been,
"Marjorie. This is what we looked for, is it not?... Topcliffe is come,
is he? Well, let him come. He or another. It is for this that we have
all looked since the beginning. Christ His Grace is strong enough, is it
not? It hath been strong enough for many, at least; and He will not
surely take it from me who need it so much...." (He spoke in pauses, but
his voice never faltered.) "I have prayed for that grace ever since I
have been here.... He hath given me great peace in this place.... I
think He will give it me to the end.... You must pray, my ... my child;
you must not cry like that."

(She lifted her agonized face for a moment, then she let it fall again.
It seemed as if he knew the very thoughts of her.)

"This all seems very perfect to me," he went on. "It was yourself who
first turned me to this life, and you knew surely what you did. I knew,
at least, all the while, I think; and I have never ceased to thank God.
And it was through your hands that the letter came to me to go to
Fotheringay. And it was in your house that I was taken.... And it was
Mr. Maine's beads that they found on me when they searched me here--the
pair of beads you gave me."

Again she stared at him, blind and bewildered.

He went on steadily:

"And now it is you again who bring me the first news of my passion. It
is yourself, first and last, under God, that have brought me all these
graces and crosses. And I thank you with all my heart.... But you must
pray for me to the end, and after it, too."

CHAPTER VIII

I

"Water," said a sharp voice, pricking through the enormous thickness of
the bloodshot dark that had come down on him. There followed a sound of
floods; then a sense of sudden coolness, and he opened his eyes once
more, and became aware of unbearable pain in arms and feet. Again the
whirling dark, striped with blood colour, fell on him like a blanket;
again the sound of waters falling and the sense of coolness, and again
he opened his eyes.

* * * * *

For a minute or two it was all that he could do to hold himself in
consciousness. It appeared to him a necessity to do so. He could see a
smoke-stained roof of beams and rafters, and on these he fixed his eyes,
thinking that he could hold himself so, as by thin, wiry threads of
s