e, half sulkily; "mayhap the one you are going to
will like you no better; any way, though it be a church you have robbed,
they cannot take you, once across that bourn."

These words at another time would have earned the speaker an admonition
or a cuff. They fell on Gerard now like idle air. He paid the lad in
silence, and descended the hill alone. The brook was silvery; it ran
murmuring over little pebbles, that glittered, varnished by the clear
water; he sat down and looked stupidly at them. Then he drank of the
brook; then he laved his hot feet and hands in it; it was very cold:
it waked him. He rose, and taking a run, leaped across it into Germany.
Even as he touched the strange land he turned suddenly and looked back.
"Farewell, ungrateful country!" he cried. "But for her it would cost me
nought to leave you for ever, and all my kith and kin, and--the mother
that bore me, and--my playmates, and my little native town. Farewell,
fatherland--welcome the wide world! omne so-lum for-ti p p-at-r-a." And
with these brave words in his mouth he drooped suddenly with arms and
legs all weak, and sat down and sobbed bitterly upon the foreign soil.

When the young exile had sat a while bowed down, he rose and dashed the
tears from his eyes like a man; and not casting a single glance more
behind him, to weaken his heart, stepped out into the wide world.

His love and heavy sorrow left no room in him for vulgar misgivings.
Compared with rending himself from Margaret, it seemed a small thing to
go on foot to Italy in that rude age.

All nations meet in a convent. So, thanks to his good friends the monks,
and his own thirst of knowledge, he could speak most of the languages
needed on that long road. He said to himself, "I will soon be at Rome;
the sooner the better now."

After walking a good league, he came to a place where four ways
met. Being country roads, and serpentine, they had puzzled many an
inexperienced neighbour passing from village to village. Gerard took out
a little dial Peter had given him, and set it in the autumn sun, and by
this compass steered unhesitatingly for Rome inexperienced as a young
swallow flying south; but unlike the swallow, wandering south alone.

CHAPTER XXIV

Not far on this road he came upon a little group. Two men in sober suits
stood leaning lazily on each side of a horse, talking to one another.
The rider, in a silk doublet and bright green jerkin and hose, both
of English cloth, gl