the priest at this point and
whispered something. Mr. Simpson nodded, and raised his eyes.

"Mr. Sherwood," he said, "was a scholar from Douay, but not a priest. He
was lodging in the house of a Catholic lady, and had procured mass to be
said there, and it was through her son that he was taken and charged
with recusancy."

Again ran a rustle through the benches. This executing of the laity for
religion was a new thing in their experience. The priest lifted the
paper again.

"'I found that Mr. Sherwood had been racked many times in the Tower,
during the six months he was in prison, to force him to tell, if they
could, where he had heard mass and who had said it. But they could
prevail nothing. Further, no visitor was admitted to him all this time,
and I was the first and the last that he had; and that though Mr. Roper
himself had tried to get at him for his relief; for he was confined
underground and lay in chains and filth not to be described. I said what
I could to him, but he said he needed nothing and was content, though
his pain must have been very great all this while, what with the racking
repeated over and over again and the place he lay in.

"'I was present again when he suffered at Tyburn, but was too far away
to hear anything that he said, and scarcely, indeed, could see him; but
I learned afterwards that he died well and courageously, as a Catholic
should, and made no outcry or complaint when the butchery was done on
him.

"'This, then, is the news I have to send you--sorrowful, indeed, yet
joyful, too; for surely we may think that they who bore such pains for
Christ's sake with such constancy will intercede for us whom they leave
behind. I am hoping myself to come North again before I go to Douay next
year, and will see you then and tell you more.'"

The priest laid down the paper, trembling.

Mr. FitzHerbert looked up.

"It will give pleasure to the company," he said, "to know that the
writer of the letter is Mr. Ludlam, from Radbourne, in this county. As
you have heard, he, too, hopes by God's mercy to be made priest and to
come back to England."

CHAPTER VIII

I

In the following week Robin went home again.

The clear weather of Easter had broken, and racing clouds, thick as a
pall, sped across the sky that had been so blue and so cheerful; a wind
screamed all day, now high, now low, shattering the tender flowers of
spring, ruffling the Derwent against its current, by which he rod