rted the weaker side when
it was in trouble and undergoing persecution. He felt a qualm of
uneasiness when he thought of this, and would gladly have shared
the perils if he could have shared the convictions of those who had
striven to make him their friend. Cuthbert was a little in advance
of his times in the facility with which he set aside matters of
opinion in the choosing of his friends. Those were days in which
men were seldom able to do this. They still divided themselves into
opposing camps, and hated not only the opinions embraced by their
rivals, but the rivals themselves, without any discrimination at
all. To be intimate and friendly with those of hostile opinions was
far more rare then than it has since become; and Cuthbert, who
possessed that faculty, was liable to be greatly misunderstood, and
to run into perils of which he little dreamed.

Thinking of those things he had seen that strange night led him to
wonder more and more what it could all mean; and, accordingly, upon
the morrow the first visit he paid was to Anthony Cole on the
bridge, hoping that through him this curiosity might be in some way
satisfied.

Cuthbert took the privilege accorded him in old times, and walked
through the house and up the narrow staircase without pausing in
the shop below. It was still early, and business had not yet begun.
The house was very silent; but he heard low-toned voices above, and
pursued his way towards them. As he did so a door, the existence of
which had never been discovered by him before, though he thought
the house was well known by him from attic to basement, suddenly
opened from the staircase, and a head appeared for a single
instant, and was as suddenly withdrawn. The door closed sharply,
and he heard the click as of a spring falling back to its place. He
passed his hand across his eyes as he exclaimed beneath his breath:

"Sure that was Father Urban--"

But he began to feel doubtful as to his right to come and go in
this house at will, and was about to descend the stairs quietly
again, when a door opened from above, and some one came hastily
down the stairs. Cuthbert fancied he saw the gleam of some weapon
in the hand of the advancing figure, and felt that he had better be
upon his guard.

"Cuthbert Trevlyn!" exclaimed a familiar voice, and a hand was
slipped beneath the doublet, and there was no further gleam of cold
steel. "I am right glad to welcome thee. It is well for friends to
muster at su