has that man told you anything of his own
affairs?"

"Only that he is in trouble, and must fly beyond seas."

"Pray God he may go quickly," she said devoutly. "I fear he is no man to
be trusted."

"Yet you help him," I answered.

"I help many that I could not trust," she said with quietness; "they
have the more need of help." And in truth I know that much of her good
work was among those evil-doers that others shrank from.

"This man seems strong enough to help himself," I said.

"Would that he may go quickly," was all her answer. "If the means could
but be found!"

Then she spoke to me with great urgency, commanding me to hold no
discourse with him nor with any concerning him.

I did my best to fulfil her bidding, yet it was difficult; for he was a
man who knew the world and how to take his own way in it. He contrived
more than once to see me, and to pay a kind of court to me, half in jest
and half in earnest; so that I was sometimes flattered and sometimes
angered, and sometimes frighted.

Then other circumstances happened unexpectedly, for I had a visitor that
I had never looked to see there.

I kept indoors altogether, fearing to be questioned by the neighbours;
but on a certain afternoon there came a knocking, and when I went to
open Tom Windham walked in.

I gave a cry of joy, because the sight of an old friend was pleasant in
that strange place, and it was not immediately that I could recover
myself and ask what his business was.

"I came to seek you," he said, "for I had occasion to leave my own part
of the country for the present."

[Illustration: "LOOKING AT HIM, I SAW THAT HE WAS HAGGARD AND STRANGE."]

Looking at him, I saw that he was haggard and strange, and had not the
confidence that was his formerly.

"There has been a rising there," I answered him, "and trouble among
many?"

"Much trouble," he said with gloom. Then he fell to telling me how such
of the neighbours were dead, and others were in hiding, while there were
still more that went about their work in fear for their lives, lest any
should inform against them.

"Your father's brother was taken on Sedgemoor with a pike in his hand,"
he added, "and your father has been busy ever since, raising money to
buy his pardon--for they say that money can do much."

"That is ill news, indeed," I said.

"I have come to London on my own affairs, and been to seek you at your
cousin Alstree's. When I learnt of the trouble that had befalle