rt him. Which makes it
very awkward, you see, to go and ask a favour of the Master just when
you are (so to say) defying his authority. . . . While if I hide it
from him, and he grants the favour, and then next day or the day
after I declare for Warboise, it will look like treachery, eh?"

"Damn!" said Brother Copas, still winding in his line meditatively.
"There is no such casuist as poverty. And only this morning I was
promising myself much disinterested sport in the quarrelling of you
Christian brethren. . . . But isn't that Warboise coming along the
path? . . . Yes, the very man! Well, we must try what's to be done."

"But I have given him my word, remember."

Brother Copas, if he heard, gave no sign of hearing. He had turned
to hail Brother Warboise, who came along the river path with eyes
fastened on the ground, and staff viciously prodding in time with his
steps.

"Hallo, Warboise! Halt, and give the countersign!"

Brother Warboise halted, taken at unawares, and eyed the two
doubtfully from under his bushy grey eyebrows. They were Beauchamp
both, he Blanchminster. He wore the black cloak of Blanchminster,
with the silver cross _patte_ at the breast, and looked--so Copas
murmured to himself--"like Caiaphas in a Miracle Play." His mouth
was square and firm, his grey beard straightly cut. He had been a
stationer in a small way, and had come to grief by vending only those
newspapers of which he could approve the religious tendency.

"The countersign?" he echoed slowly and doubtfully.

He seldom understood Brother Copas, but by habit suspected him of
levity.

"To be sure, among three good Protestants! '_Bloody end to the
Pope!_' is it not?"

"You are mocking me," snarled Brother Warboise, and with that struck
the point of his staff passionately upon the pathway. "You are a
Gallio, and always will be: you care nothing for what is heaven and
earth to us others. But you have no right to infect Bonaday, here,
with your poison. He has promised me." Brother Warboise faced upon
Brother Bonaday sternly, "You promised me, you know you did."

"To be sure he promised you," put in Brother Copas. "He has just
been telling me."

"And I am going to hold him to it! These are not times for
falterers, halters between two opinions. If England is to be saved
from coming a second time under the yoke of Papacy, men will have to
come out in their true colours. He that is not for us is against
us."

Brother