rd and his race, you from many dangers, your betrothed
from a marriage which she hates--that is, if you can get safe away with
it from Dunwich."

"Where to, Father?"

"To King Edward in London, with another that I will write for you ere
the dawn."

"But is it safe, Father, to trust so precious a thing to me, who have
bitter enemies awaiting me, and may as like as not be crow's meat by
to-morrow?"

Father Arnold looked at him with his soft and dreamy eyes, then said:

"I think the crow's not hatched that will pick your bones, Hugh, though
at the last there be crows, or worms, for all of us."

"Why not, Father? Doubtless, this morning young John of Clavering
thought as much, and now he is in the stake-nets, or food for fishes."

"Would you like to hear, Hugh, and will you keep it to yourself, even
from Eve?"

"Ay, that I would and will."

"He'll think me mad!" muttered the old priest to himself, then went
on aloud as one who takes a sudden resolution. "Well, I'll tell you,
leaving you to make what you will of a story that till now has been
heard by no living man."

"Far in the East is the great country that we call Cathay, though in
truth it has many other names, and I alone of all who breathe in England
have visited that land."

"How did you get there?" asked Hugh, amazed, for though he knew dimly
that Father Arnold had travelled much in his youth, he never dreamed
that he had reached the mystic territories of Cathay, or indeed that
such a place really was except in fable.

"It would take from now till morning to tell, son, nor even then would
you understand the road. It is enough to say that I went on a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem, where our blessed Saviour died. That was the beginning.
Thence I travelled with Arabs to the Red Sea, where wild men made a
slave of me, and we were blown across the Indian Ocean to a beauteous
island named Ceylon, in which all the folk are black.

"From this place I escaped in a vessel called a junk, that brought me
to the town of Singapore. Thence at last, following my star, I came to
Cathay after two years of journeyings. There I dwelt in honour for
three more years, moving from place to place, since never before had its
inhabitants seen a Western man, and they made much of me, always sending
me forward to new cities. So at length I reached the greatest of them
all, which is called Kambaluc, or Peking, and there was the guest of its
Emperor, Timur.

"All the story of my life