But soon this sweet illusion faded, and the young man sat up in bed and looked quickly round him, trying to recollect where he was and what had brought him here.  During the last two years, in which he had been forced to lead the roving life of an adventurer—­common enough in those days, and by no means entirely distasteful to one of his temperament and training—­he had slept in many strange places, and had known quarters far ruder than the unceiled, raftered room of the gabled farm.

In time it all came back to him—­the attack upon the helpless girl in the wood, his own successful defence, and the journey to the farmhouse in the gathering darkness.  Paul gave himself a shake to see how he felt, and decided that although stiff and bruised, and crippled in the left arm, he might yet make shift to rise and dress himself.  He saw his clothes all laid out in readiness for him, and it was plain that some good friend had sat up far into the night brushing and mending them; for they had been in somewhat sorry plight after his adventure of yesterday, and now they were fresh and clean and almost smart looking, as they had not been for many a long day before.

As Paul was slowly dressing, he was suddenly aware of the sound of a woman’s voice speaking or reading—­he fancied from its monotonous cadence that it must be the latter—­in some room that could not be far away from his own chamber.  In those days such an accomplishment as reading was not at all common to the inhabitants of a farm, and Paul stood still in surprise to listen.

Yes, there was no mistaking it, there was certainly somebody—­some woman—­reading aloud in a chamber hard by.  Presently the cadence of the voice changed, and Paul was certain that the reading had changed to prayer; but not the pattering Paternosters or Ave Marias with which he was familiar enough.  This style of prayer was quite different from that; and the young man, after listening for a few moments with bated breath, exclaimed to himself, in accents of surprise and some dismay: 

“Lollards, in good sooth!  By the mass, I must have stumbled into a nest of heresy;” and he crossed himself devoutly, as if to shield himself from the evil of contamination.

Paul had been born and bred a Papist, as indeed was the case with most of his countrymen in those days.  The House of Lancaster was deeply attached to the faith as they found it, and Henry the Sixth had burned many a heretic at Smithfield; for he was at once a saint and a fanatic—­a very common combination then, hard enough as it seems now to bracket the two qualities together—­and led in all things by his ghostly advisers.

But the leaven of the new doctrines was silently working throughout the length and breadth of the land in spite of all repressive measures, and King Edward the Fourth, either from policy or indifference, had done little or nothing to check its spread.  London—­the place of all others which was ever loyal to him—­was a perfect hotbed of heresy (in the language of the priests), and that alone was enough to deter the Yorkist monarch from stirring up strife and bringing down upon his head the enmity of the powerful city which served him so well.  Now that the meek Henry wore the crown again—­if indeed he did wear it—­the Lollards might well tremble for their liberties and lives.