my trust in the Precious
Blood of my Saviour, and in that alone. Does that satisfy you?"

Mr. Dent's face was breaking into smiles, and at the end he took the
priest's face in his hands and kissed him gently twice on the cheeks.

"Then, my dear boy, I fear nothing for you. May that salvation you hope
for be yours." And then without a word he was gone.

Anthony's conscience reproached him a little that he had said nothing of
the Church to the minister; but Mr. Dent had been so peremptory about
doctrine that it was hard for the younger man to say what he would have
wished. He told him, however, plainly on his next visit that he held
whole-heartedly too that the Catholic Church was the treasury of Grace
that Christ had instituted, and added a little speech about his longing
to see his old friend a Catholic too; but Mr. Dent shook his head. The
corners of his eyes wrinkled a little, and a shade of his old fretfulness
passed over his face.

"Nay, if you talk like that," he said, "I must be gone. I am no
theologian. You must let me alone."

He gave him news this time of Mr. Buxton.

"He is in the Counter, as you know," he said, "and is a very bright and
cheerful person, it seems to me. Mistress Isabel asked me to see him and
give her news of him, for she cannot get admittance. He is in a cell,
little and nasty; but he said to me that a Protestant prison was a
Papist's pleasaunce--in fact he said it twice. And he asked very eagerly
after you and Mistress Isabel. He tried, too, to inveigle me into talk of
Peter his prerogative, but I would not have it. It was Lammas Day when I
saw him, and he spoke much of it."

Anthony asked whether there was anything said of what punishment Mr.
Buxton would suffer.

"Well," said Mr. Dent, "the Lieutenant of the Tower told me that her
Grace was so sad at the death of Mistress Corbet that she was determined
that no more blood should be shed than was obliged over this matter; and
that Mr. Buxton, he thought, would be but deprived of his estates and
banished; but I know not how that may be. But we shall soon know."

These weeks of waiting were full of consolation and refreshment to
Anthony: the nervous stress of the life of the seminary priest in
England, full of apprehension and suspense, crowned, as it had been in
his case, by the fierce excitement of the last days of his liberty--all
this had strained and distracted his soul, and the peace of the prison
life, with the certainty that