, and that Sir George Peckham himself, who was
known to have harboured Campion, had been committed to the Marshalsea;
but yet the Jesuits' influence was steadily on the increase. More and
more severe penalties had been lately enacted; it was now declared to be
high treason to reconcile or be reconciled to the Church of Rome;
overwhelming losses in fortune as well as liberty were threatened against
all who said or heard Mass or refused to attend the services of the
Establishment; but, as was discovered from papers that fell from time to
time into the hands of the Government agents, the only answer of the
priests was to inveigh more strenuously against even occasional
conformity, declaring it to be the mortal sin of schism, if not of
apostasy, to put in an appearance under any circumstances, except those
of actual physical compulsion, at the worship in the parish churches.
Worse than all, too, was the fact that this severe gospel began to
prevail; recusancy was reported to be on the increase in all parts of the
country; and many of the old aristocracy began to return to the faith of
their fathers: Lords Arundel, Oxford, Vaux, Henry Howard, and Sir Francis
Southwell were all beginning to fall under the suspicion of the shrewdest
Government spies.

The excitement at Lambeth ran higher day by day as the summer drew on;
the net was being gradually contracted in the home counties; spies were
reported to be everywhere, in inns, in the servants' quarters of
gentlemen's houses, lounging at cross roads and on village greens.
Campion's name was in every mouth. Now they were on his footsteps, it was
said; now he was taken; now he was gone back to France; now he was in
London; now in Lancashire; and each rumour in turn corrected its
predecessor.

Anthony shared to the full in the excitement; the figure of the quarry,
after which so many hawks were abroad, appealed to his imagination. He
dreamed of him at night, once as a crafty-looking man with narrow eyes
and stooping shoulders, that skulked and ran from shadow to shadow across
a moonlit country; once as a ruddy-faced middle-aged gentleman riding
down a crowded street; and several times as a kind of double of Mr.
Stewart, whom he had never forgotten, since he had watched him in the
little room of Maxwell Hall, gallant and alert among his enemies.

At last one day in July, as it drew on towards evening, and as Anthony
was looking over the stable-accounts in his little office beyond