's time from the
night he first set foot across the threshold of Figeon's Farm he
was held to be out of danger, though excessively weak and ill.

During the long nights when his hostess had watched beside him,
thinking that he was either unconscious or delirious, Paul had seen
and heard more than she knew. He had heard her read, as if to
herself, strange and beautiful words from a book upon her
knee--words that had seemed full of peace and light and comfort,
and which had sunk into his weary brain with strangely soothing
power. Some of these same words were not quite unfamiliar to
him--at least he knew their equivalents in the Latin tongue; but
somehow when spoken thus in the language of everyday life, they
came home to him with tenfold greater force, whilst some of the
sweetest and deepest and most comforting words were altogether new
to him.

And as his strength revived, Paul's anxiety to hear more of such
words grew with it; and one forenoon, as his nurse sat beside him
with her busy needle flying, he looked up at her and said, "You do
not read out of the book any more, and I would fain hear those
wonderful words again."

"I knew not that you had ever heard."

"Yes, I heard much, and it seemed to ease my pain and give me happy
thoughts. It is a beautiful and a goodly book. May I not hear
more?"

"I would that all the world might hear the life giving words of
that book, Paul," said the good woman with a sigh. "But they come
from Wycliffe's Bible, and the holy brothers tell us that it is a
wicked book, which none of us should read."

"It cannot be a wicked book which holds such goodly words--words
that in the Latin tongue the Holy Church herself makes use of,"
said Paul stoutly. "It may be bad for unlettered and ignorant men
to try to teach and expound the words they read, but the words
themselves are good words. May I not see the book myself?"

"You know the risk you run in so doing, Paul?"

"Ay; but I am a good son of the Church, and I fear not to see what
manner of book this be. If it is bad, I will no more of it."

The woman smiled slightly as she rose from her seat and touched a
spring in the wall hard by the chimney. A sliding panel sprang back
and disclosed a small shelf, upon which stood a large book, which
the woman placed in Paul's hands, closing the panel immediately.

He lay still, turning the leaves with his thin hands, and
marvelling what the Church found to condemn in so holy a book as
thi