lpless prey?"

Howls, execrations, oaths followed freely; but the village people
were to a man with their young lord, and the scions of Mortimer
felt it by instinct.

"Who is he? Whence came he?" was being asked on all sides; but none
could give an answer. He was a stranger to the village, but all
those who had been drinking in his words rallied round him, and
declared he was but a simple peddler whose wares they had been
buying; and Bertram, who really thought so, stood beside the tree,
opened the bundle, and showed the innocent nature of the wares.

His brothers had forced their way to his side by this time, and
helped to make a ring round the poor hunchback; and Edred kept a
very sharp eye upon the emptying of the pack, resolved if there
should be any book at the bottom to contrive that it should not
reach the eyes of any of the vindictive followers of Mortimer.

But there was nothing of the sort to be seen. The man was both too
poor and too wary to carry such dangerous things with him. His own
thin volume had been slipped into some secret receptacle about his
person, and his calmness of bearing helped to convince all who were
open to conviction that he was innocent of the charge brought
against him.

With dark, lowering faces, and many muttered threats, the Mortimer
retainers drew off, seeing that with public feeling dead against
them they could not prevail to work their will upon the intended
victim. But Warbel was made very anxious by the words he heard
openly spoken on all sides, and he would have given much to have
hindered this act of Bertram's, generous and manly though he knew
it to have been.

"It is ill work drawing down the charge of heresy," he remarked, as
he got the boys at last in full march homeward. "Any other charge
one can laugh to scorn; but no man may tell where orthodoxy ends
and heresy begins. Godly bishops have been sent to prison, and
priests to the stake. How may others hope to escape?"

"Tush!" answered Bertram lightly; "there was never a heretic at
Chad yet, and never will be one, I trow. Was I to see a poor
cripple like that done to death without striking a blow in his
defence--he in Chadwick, of which my father is lord of the manor?
Was I to see Mortimer's men turning a gay holiday into a scene of
horror and affright? Never! I were unworthy of my name had I not
interposed. The man was no heretic, and if he had been--"

"Have a care, sir, how thou speakest; have a care, I entre