“Sure, he hath discovered the escape of Master Garret!”

The young men drew back behind a buttress to let him pass, and he was too disturbed in mind to mark them.  They looked after him as he went up the church, and saw him go to the dean and enter into a whispered colloquy with him.  Then both came forth again, looking greatly disturbed; and at that moment up came Dr. London, the Warden of New College, all out of breath with his hurry, so that Arthur whispered from his nook of concealment to Dalaber: 

“He hath the air of a hungry lion ravening after his prey.”

The three then stood together talking in excited fashion.

“You are to blame, sir, much to blame!  How came you to leave him for so many hours unguarded, and only one bolt to the door?  These men are as artful as the devil their master.  It may be that he gives them powers—­”

“Tush!” answered Dr. Cottisford angrily; “he got out by his own craft.  I had thought that fasting and loneliness would be a profitable discipline for him.  But I bid my servants keep an eye to the outer doors, which they omitted to do.”

“You have done wrong, very wrong.  I know not what the cardinal will say,” spoke the dean of the college, thrusting out his lips and looking very wise.  “It was his command that this pestilent fellow should be taken; and when he hears that he was laid by the heels, and then escaped, being so carelessly guarded, I know not what he will say.  You will have to answer for it, Dr. Cottisford.  The cardinal’s anger is not good to brook.”

Tears of mortification and anger stood in the eyes of the commissary.  He felt that fate had been very unkind to him.

“He cannot have got far.  He shall be taken.  We will haste to send servants and spies everywhere abroad.  He got out in full daylight.  He must have been seen.  We shall get upon his tracks, and then we will hunt him down as bloodhounds hunt their quarry.  He shall not escape us long, and then shall he answer for his sins.  He will not find that he bath profited aught by the trouble he hath given us.”

The voices died away in the distance, and the two young men came slowly forth, looking gravely into each other’s eyes.

“Will they indeed take him?” spoke Dalaber beneath his breath.

“They will try, and they will be close on his heels; yet men have escaped such odds before this.  But here comes Master Clarke.  Heaven be praised that they have not spoken of him in this matter.  Perchance the hunt after Garret will divert their minds from the question they have raised about the lectures and readings in his room.”

Clarke greeted his friends with a smile, but saw that they were troubled; and when they reached his room and told the tale, his own face was serious.

They talked awhile together, and then he prayed with them earnestly, for Arthur would not be excluded from joining in this exercise.  He prayed that if trial and trouble overtook them, they might have needful strength and faith to meet it; might have grace to follow the Lord’s injunction to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves; and might never be tempted to think themselves forgotten or forsaken of the Lord, even though the clouds might hang dark in the sky, and the tempest rage long and furiously about them.