and the nail in another pressed simultaneously, and how then
the entire set of shelves swung open.

Then they went back and he showed him the spring behind the frame of the
picture.

"You see the advantage of this," he went on: "on the one side you may
flee upstairs, a treasonable skulking cassocked jack-priest with the
lords and the commons and the Queen's Majesty barking at your heels; and
on the other side you may saunter down the gallery without your beard and
in a murrey doublet, a friend of Mr. Buxton's, taking the air and
wondering what the devil all the clamouring be about."

Then he took him downstairs again and showed him finally the escape of
which he was most proud--the entrance, designed in the cellar-staircase,
to an underground passage from the cellars, which led, he told him,
across to the garden-house beyond the lime-avenue.

"That is the pride of my heart," he said, "and maybe will be useful some
day; though I pray not. Ah! her Grace and her honest Council are right.
We Papists are a crafty and deceitful folk, Father Anthony."

* * * *

The four grew very intimate during those few weeks; they had many
memories and associations in common on which to build up friendship, and
the aid of a common faith and a common peril with which to cement it. The
gracious beauty of the house and the life at Stanfield, too, gilded it
all with a very charming romance. They were all astonished at the easy
intimacy with which they behaved, one to another.

Mary Corbet was obliged to return to her duties at Court at the beginning
of September; and she had something of an ache at her heart as the time
drew on; for she had fallen once more seriously in love with Isabel. She
said a word of it to Mr. Buxton. They were walking in the lime-avenue
together after dinner on the last day of Mary's visit.

"You have a good chaplain," she said; "what an honest lad he is! and how
serious and recollected! Please God he at least may escape their claws!"

"It is often so," said Mr. Buxton, "with those wholesome out-of-door
boys; they grow up into such simple men of God."

"And Isabel!" said Mary, rustling round upon him as she walked. "What a
great dame she is become! I used to lie on her bed and kick my heels and
laugh at her; but now I would like to say my prayers to her. She is
somewhat like our Lady herself, so grave and serious, and yet so warm and
tender."

Mr. Buxton nodded sh