Robin asked him whether the priests who came and went should be told of the blow that impended; for at those times every apostasy was of importance to priests who had to run here and there for shelter.

“I will tell one or two of the more discreet ones myself,” said Mr. Thomas, “if you will give me leave.  I would that they were all discreet, but they are not.  We will name no names, if you please; but some of them are unreasonable altogether and think nothing of bringing us all into peril.”

He began to bite his beard again.

“Do you think the Commissioners will visit us again?” asked Anthony.  “Mr. Fenton was telling me—­”

“It is Mr. Fenton and the like that will bring them down on us if any will,” burst out Mr. FitzHerbert peevishly.  “I am as good a Catholic, I hope, as any in the world; but we can surely live without the sacraments for a month or two sometimes!  But it is this perpetual coming and going of priests that enrages her Grace and her counsellors.  I do not believe her Grace has any great enmity against us; but she soon will, if men like Mr. Fenton and Mr. Bassett are for ever harbouring priests and encouraging them.  It is the same in London, I hear; it is the same in Lancashire; it is the same everywhere.  And all the world knows it, and thinks that we do contemn her Grace by such boldness.  All the mischief came in with that old Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, in ’69, and—­”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” came in a quiet voice from beyond him; and Robin, looking across, saw Anthony with a face as if frozen.

“Pooh! pooh!” burst out Mr. Thomas, with an uneasy air.  “The Holy Father, I take it, may make mistakes, as I understand it, in such matters, as well as any man.  Why, a dozen priests have said to me they thought it inopportune; and—­”

“I do not permit,” said Anthony with an air of dignity beyond his years, “that any man should speak so in my company.”

“Well, well; you are too hot altogether, Mr. Babington.  I admire such zeal indeed, as I do in the saints; but we are not bound to imitate all that we admire.  Say no more, sir; and I will say no more either.”

They rode in silence.

It was, indeed, one of those matters that were in dispute at that time amongst the Catholics.  The Pope was not swift enough for some, and too swift for others.  He had thundered too soon, said one party, if, indeed, it was right to thunder at all, and not to wait in patience till the Queen’s Grace should repent herself; and he had thundered not soon enough, said the other.  Whence it may at least be argued that he had been exactly opportune.  Yet it could not be denied that since the day when he had declared Elizabeth cut off from the unity of the Church and her subjects absolved from their allegiance—­though never, as some pretended then and have pretended ever since, that a private person might kill her and do no wrong—­ever since that day her bitterness had increased yearly against her Catholic people, who desired no better than to serve both her and their God, if she would but permit that to be possible.