as
he is very familiar with them. You will meet them both at supper: of
course they will be both dressed as laymen. The Protestants blamed poor
Campion for that, you know; but had he not gone in disguise, they would
only have hanged him all the sooner. I like not hypocrisy."

Anthony was greatly impressed by Father Robert when he met him at supper.
He was a tall and big man, who seemed about forty years of age, with a
long square-jawed face, a pointed beard and moustache, and shrewd
penetrating eyes. He seemed to be a man in advance of his time; he was
full of reforms and schemes that seemed to Anthony remarkably to the
point; and they were reforms too quite apart from ecclesiasticism, but
rather such as would be classed in our days under the title of Christian
Socialism.

For example, he showed a great sympathy for the condition of the poor and
outcast and criminals; and had a number of very practical schemes for
their benefit.

"Two things," he said, in answer to a question of Anthony's, "I would do
to-morrow if I had the power. First I would allow of long leases for
fifty and a hundred years. Everywhere the soil is becoming impoverished;
each man squeezes out of it as much as he can, and troubles not to feed
the land or to care for it beyond his time. Long leases, I hold, would
remedy this. It would encourage the farmer to look before him and think
of his sons and his sons' sons. And second, I would establish banks for
poor men. There is many a man now a-begging who would be living still in
his own house, if there had been some honest man whom he could have
trusted to keep his money for him, and, maybe, give him something for the
loan of it: for in these days, when there is so much enterprise, money
has become, as it were, a living thing that grows; or at the least a tool
that can be used; and therefore, when it is lent, it is right that the
borrower should pay a little for it. This is not the same as the usury
that Holy Church so rightly condemns: at least, I hold not, though some,
I know, differ from me."

After supper the talk turned on education: here, too, the priest had his
views.

"But you are weary of hearing me!" he said, in smiling apology. "You will
think me a schoolmaster."

"And I pray you to consider me your pupil," said Mr. Buxton. The priest
made a little deprecating gesture.

"First, then," he said, "I would have a great increase of grammar
schools. It is grievous to think of England as she