tanding by the tall carved fire-place with his back to the door,
his head and one hand leaning against the stone, and he turned round
despondently as Chris came in. Chris could see he was deadly pale and
that his lips twitched with nervousness.

"Brother," he said, "I have a perilous matter to go through, and you
must come with me."

Chris felt his heart begin to labour with heavy sick beats.

"I am to see my Lord of Rochester. A friend hath obtained the order. We
are to go at five o'clock. See that you be ready. We shall take boat at
the stairs."

Chris waited, with his eyes deferentially cast down.

"He is to be tried again on Thursday," went on the Prior, "and my
friends wish me to see him, God knows--"

He stopped abruptly, made a sign with his hand, and as Chris left the
room he saw that he was leaning once more against the stone-work, and
that his head was buried in his arms.

Three more Carthusians had been condemned in the previous week, but the
Bishop's trial, though his name was in the first indictment, was
postponed a few days.

He too, like Sir Thomas More, had been over a year in the Tower; he had
been deprived of his see by an Act of Parliament, his palace had been
broken into and spoiled, and he himself, it was reported, was being
treated with the greatest rigour in the Tower.

Chris was overcome with excitement at the thought that he was to see
this man. He had heard of his learning, his holiness, and his
austerities on all hands since his coming to London. When the bishop had
left Rochester at his summons to London a year before there had been a
wonderful scene of farewell, of which the story was still told in town.
The streets had been thronged with a vast crowd weeping and praying, as
he rode among them bare-headed, giving his blessing as he went. He had
checked his horse by the city-gate, and with a loud voice had bidden
them all stand by the old religion, and let no man take it from them.
And now here he lay himself in prison for the Faith, a Cardinal of the
Holy Roman Church, with scarcely clothes to cover him or food to eat. At
the sacking of his palace, too, as the men ran from room to room tearing
down the tapestries, and piling the plate together, a monk had found a
great iron box hidden in a corner. They cried to one another that it
held gold "for the bloody Pope"; and burst it open to find a hair shirt,
and a pair of disciplines.

* * * * *

It was