and a complete lack of enthusiasm. Mr. Robin
rode loosely and heavily. Three or four times his mare stumbled (and no
wonder, after all that she had gone through), and he jerked her
savagely.

Then Dick tried another tack and began to speak of the company, but with
no greater success. He discoursed on the riding of Mrs. Fenton, and the
peregrine of Mr. Thomas, who had distinguished herself that day, and he
was met by a lack-lustre eye once more.

Finally he began to speak of the religious gossip of the
countryside--how it was said that another priest, a Mr. Nelson, had been
taken, in London, as Mr. Maine had been in Cornwall; that, it was said
again, priests would have to look to their lives in future, and not only
to their liberty; how the priest, Mr. Simpson, was said to be a native
of Yorkshire, and how he was ridden northwards again, still with Mr.
Ludlam. And here he met with a little more encouragement. Mr. Robin
asked where was Mr. Simpson gone to, and Dick told him he did not know,
but that he would be back again by Easter, it was thought, or, if not,
another priest would be in the district. Then he began to gossip of Mr.
Ludlam; how a man had told him that his cousin's wife thought that Mr.
Ludlam was to go abroad to be made priest himself, and that perhaps Mr.
Garlick would go too.

"That is the kind of priest we want, sir," said Dick.

"Eh?"

"That is the kind of priest we want, sir," repeated Dick solemnly. "We
should do better with natives than foreigners. We want priests who know
the county and the ways of the people--and men too, I think, sir, who
can ride and know something of sport, and can talk of it. I told Mr.
Simpson, sir, of the sport we were to have to-day, and he seemed to care
nothing about it!"

Robin sighed aloud.

"I suppose so," he said.

"Mr. John looked well, sir," pursued Dick, and proceeded to speak at
length of the FitzHerbert troubles, and the iniquities of the Queen's
Grace. He was such a man as was to be found throughout all England
everywhere at this time--a man whose religion was a part of his
politics, and none the less genuine for that. He was a shrewd man in his
way, with the simplicity which belongs to such shrewdness; he disliked
the new ways which he experienced chiefly in the towns, and put them
down, not wholly without justice, to the change of which religion formed
an integral part; he hated the beggars and would gladly have gone to see
one flogged; and he disli