their steps that they might listen the better.

Cuthbert's quick ears were the first to gather any sort of meaning
from the discordant shouts and cries which arose.

"They are chasing some wretched fugitive!" he said in a low voice.
"That is the sound of pursuit. Hark! they are coming this way. Who
and what are they thus hounding on?"

Nearer and nearer came the surging sound of many voices and the
hurried trampling of feet.

"Stop him--catch him--hold him!" shouted a score of hoarse voices,
rolling along through the fog-laden air long before anything could
be seen. "Stop him, good folks, stop him! stop the runaway
priest--stop the treacherous Jesuit! He is an enemy to peace--a
stirrer up of sedition and conspiracy! Down with him--to prison
with him! it is not fit for such a fellow to live. Down with
him--stop him!"

"A priest!" exclaimed Cuthbert between his shut teeth, a sudden
gleam corning into his eyes. "Jacob, heard you that? A priest--a
man of God! one man against a hundred! Canst thou stand by and see
such a one hunted to death? that cannot I."

Jacob cared little for priests--indeed, he had no very good opinion
of the race, and none of Cuthbert's traditional reverence; but he
had all an Englishman's love of fair play, and hated the cruelty
and cowardice of an angry mob as he hated anything mean and vile,
and he doubled back his wrist bands and clinched his horny fists as
he answered:

"I am with thee, good Cuthbert. We will stand for the weaker side.
Priest or no, he shall not be hounded to death in the streets
without one blow struck in his defence. But how to find him in this
fog?"

"We need not fight; that were mere madness," answered Cuthbert in
rapid tones. "Ours is to hurry the fugitive into the wherry, loose
from shore, and out into the river; and then they may seek as they
will, they can never find us. Mist! hark! the cries come nigher. If
the quarry is indeed before them, it must be very nigh. Mark! I
hear a gliding footfall beside the wall. Keep close to me; I go to
the rescue."

Cuthbert sprang swiftly through the darkness, and in a moment he
felt the gown of a priest in his hand, and heard the sound of the
distressed breathing of one hunted well nigh to the verge of
exhaustion. As the hunted man felt the clasp upon his robe he
uttered a little short, sharp cry, and made as if he would have
stopped short; but Cuthbert had him fast by the arm, and hurried
him along the narrow alley tow