way to a safe retreat. They were not afraid of losing the
boat, for it was not to sail till nightfall; but their impatience
acted like a spur, and drove them steadily forward; and save for
the needful halts to refresh themselves and their beasts, they did
not tarry or draw rein.

It was growing towards the westering of the sun when they beheld
the great sea lying before them far below, and Edred's eyes glowed
with joy as he saw the white-winged shallops flitting hither and
thither on the wide expanse of blue water, and pictured how soon
Brother Emmanuel would be sailing away out of the reach of peril.
Truly God had been very good in hearing and answering prayer. Edred
had, by some instinct for which he could not account, addressed his
prayers of late less to the blessed Virgin and more to the Son of
God Himself--struck, perhaps, by the words he had heard from the
lips of the heretic peddler about the "one Mediator, the man Christ
Jesus." He now turned in his saddle and waited till Brother
Emmanuel came up. It was too solitary a place for them to care to
keep up the appearance of master and servant.

Riding thus side by side, Brother Emmanuel talked with the boys out
of the fulness of his heart. His week of captivity had been spent
in deep and earnest thought, and some of these thoughts were
imparted to the boys in that last serious talk. He bid them hold in
all reverence and godly fear that Church which was the body of
Christ, and those ordinances which had been given at the beginning
for the perfecting of the saints, and which were God's ways of
dealing with man. But he warned them in solemn tones of the fearful
disease which had attacked the body, and which threatened a fearful
remedy before that body could be cleansed; he warned them also of
the perils which beset the path of those who should live to see the
coming struggle. There would be men who would vow that whatever the
Church said and did must be right because the Church was the body
of Christ, not knowing that even that body can become corrupt
(though never the Head) if the will of man be put in the stead of
the will of God; and these would cling to the corruptions as
closely as to the ordinances of God, and become bitter persecutors
of those who would arise and seek to cleanse and renew the body by
God-given remedies. But again there would be men who would arise
and deny that there was a body, would condemn the very name of the
Church, and avow that what t