y. He had a bright and interested face, Marjorie thought; and
the instant they were sat down, she knew the reason of it.

"We are just in time," he said. "These letters have been lying here for
me the last week. They will be here, they tell me, by to-morrow night.
But that is not all--"

He glanced round the dusky room; then he laid down the knife with which
he was carving; and spoke in a yet lower voice.

"Father Campion is in the house," he said.

His sister started.

"In the house?... Do you mean--"

He nodded mysteriously, as he took up the knife again.

"He has been here three or four days. The rooms are full in the ... in
the usual place. And I have spoken with him; he is coming here after
supper. He had already supped."

Marjorie leaned back in her chair; but she said nothing. From beneath in
the house came the sound of singing, from the tavern parlour where boys
were performing madrigals.

It seemed to her incredible that she should presently be speaking with
the man, whose name was already affecting England as perhaps no priest's
name had ever affected it. He had been in England, she knew,
comparatively a short time; yet in that time, his name had run like fire
from mouth to mouth. To the minds of Protestants there was something
almost diabolical about the man; he was here, he was there, he was
everywhere, and yet, when the search was up, he was nowhere. Tales were
told of his eloquence that increased the impression that he made a
thousand-fold; it was said that he could wile birds off their branches
and the beasts from their lairs; and this eloquence, it was known, could
be heard only by initiates, in far-off country houses, or in quiet,
unsuspected places in the cities. He preached in some shrouded and
locked room in London one day; and the next, thirty miles off, in a
cow-shed to rustics. And his learning and his subtlety were equal to his
eloquence: her Grace had heard him at Oxford years ago, before his
conversion; and, it was said, would refuse him nothing, even now, if he
would but be reasonable in his religion; even Canterbury, it was
reported, might be his. And if he would not be reasonable--then, as was
fully in accordance with what was known of her Grace, nothing was too
bad for him.

Such feeling then, on the part of Protestants, found its fellow in that
of the Catholics. He was their champion, as no other man could be. Had
he not issued his famous "challenge" to any and all of the Prote