Stanfield
Place.

First, however, they went to Speke Hall, the home of Mr. Norreys, on the
banks of the Mersey, a beautiful house of magpie architecture, and
furnished with a remarkable underground passage to the shore of the
Mersey, the scene of Richard Brittain's escape.

Here they received a very warm welcome.

"It is as I wrote to Mr. Buxton," said his host on the evening of their
arrival, "in many places in this country any religion other than the
Catholic is unknown. The belief of the Protestant is as strange as that
of the Turk, both utterly detested. I was in Cumberland a few months
back; there in more than one village the old worship goes on as it has
done since Christianity first came to this island. But I hope you will go
up there, now that you have come so far. You would do a great work for
Christ his Church."

He told him, too, a number of stories of the zeal and constancy shown on
behalf of the Religion; of small squires who were completely ruined by
the fines laid upon them; of old halls that were falling to pieces
through the ruin brought upon their staunch owners; and above all of the
priests that Lancashire had added to the roll of the martyrs--Anderton,
Marsden, and Thompson among others--and of the joy shown when the
glorious news of their victory over death reached the place where they
had been born or where they had ministered.

"At Preston," he said, "when the news of Mr. Greenaway's death reached
them, they tolled the bells for sorrow. But his old mother ran from her
house to the street when they had broken the news to her: 'Peal them,
peal them!' she cried, 'for I have borne a martyr to God.'"

He talked, too, of Campion, of his sermons on "The King who went a
journey," and the "Hail, Mary"; and told him of the escape at Blainscow
Hall, where the servant-girl, seeing the pursuivants at hand, pushed the
Jesuit, with quick wit and courage, into the duck-pond, so that he came
out disguised indeed--in green mud--and was mocked at by the very
officers as a clumsy suitor of maidens.

Anthony's heart warmed within him as he sat and listened to these tales
of patience and gallantry.

"I would lay down my life to serve such folk," he said; and Isabel looked
with deep-kindled eyes from the one to the other.

They did not stay more than a day or two at Speke Hall, for, as Mr.
Norreys said, the necessaries of salvation were to be had there already;
but they moved on almost at once northwards, alw