ert's real name was very great.
As he lay in bed that night the thought of it all would hardly let him
sleep. He turned to and fro, trying to realise that there, within a dozen
yards of him, lay the famous Jesuit for whose blood all Protestant
England was clamouring. The name of Persons was still sinister and
terrible even to this convert; and he could scarcely associate in his
thoughts all its suggestiveness with that kindly fervent lover of Jesus
Christ who had led him with such skill and tenderness along the way of
the Gospel. Others in England were similarly astonished in later years to
learn that a famous Puritan book of devotions was scarcely other than a
reprint of Father Persons' "Christian Directory."

The following day about noon, after an affectionate good-bye to his host
and Mr. Blake, Anthony rode out of the iron-wrought gates and down the
village street in the direction of Great Keynes.

It was a perfect spring-day. Overhead there was a soft blue sky with
translucent clouds floating in it; underfoot and on all sides the mystery
of life was beginning to stir and manifest itself. The last touch of
bitterness had passed from the breeze, and all living growth was making
haste out into the air. The hedges were green with open buds, and
bubbling with the laughter and ecstasy of the birds; the high sloping
overhung Sussex lanes were sweet with violets and primroses; and here and
there under the boughs Anthony saw the blue carpet of bell-flowers
spread. Rabbits whisked in and out of the roots, superintending and
provisioning the crowded nurseries underground; and as Anthony came out,
now and again on the higher and open spaces larks vanished up their airy
spirals of song into the illimitable blue; or hung, visible musical
specks against a fleecy cloud, pouring down their thin cataract of
melody. And as he rode, for every note of music and every glimpse of
colour round him, his own heart poured out pulse after pulse of that
spiritual essence that lies beneath all beauty, and from which all beauty
is formed, to the Maker of all this and the Saviour of himself. There
were set wide before him now the gates of a kingdom, compared to which
this realm of material life round about was but a cramped and wintry
prison after all.

How long he had lived in the cold and the dark! he thought; kept alive by
the refracted light that stole down the steps to where he sat in the
shadow of death; saved from freezing by the warmth o