Mr. John threw out his hands.

“These prisons are devilish,” he said; “they wear a man out as the rack can never do.  Why, see my son!” he cried.  “Oh!  I can speak of him if I am but moved enough!  It was that same Derby gaol that wore him out too!  It is the darkness, and the ill food, and the stenches and the misery.  A man’s heart fails him there, who could face a thousand deaths in the sunlight.  Man after man hath fallen there—­both in Derby, and in London and in all the prisons.  It is their heart that goes—­all the courage runs from them like water, with their health.  If it were the rack and the rope only, England would be Catholic, yet, I think.”

The old man’s face blazed with indignation; it was not often that he so spoke out his mind.  It was very easy to see that he had thought continually of his son’s fall.

“Mistress Manners hath told me the very same thing,” said Robin.  “She visited Mr. Thomas in gaol once at least.  She said that her heart failed her altogether there.”

Mr. Ludlam smiled.

“I suppose it is so,” he said gently, “since you say so.  But I think it would not be so with me.  The rack and the rope, rather, are what would shake me to the roots, unless God His Grace prevailed more than it ever yet hath with see.”

He smiled again.

Robin shook his head sharply.

“As for me—!” he said grimly, with tight lips.

* * * * *

It was a lovely night of stars as the four stepped out of the archway before going upstairs to the parlour.  Behind them stood the square and solid house, resembling a very fortress.  The lights that had been brought in still shone through the windows, and a hundred night insects leapt and poised in the brightness.

And before them lay the deep valley—­silent now except for the trickle of the stream; dark (since the moon was not yet risen), except for one light that burned far away in some farm-house on the other side; and this light went out, like a closing eye, even as they looked.  But overhead, where God dwelt, all heaven was alive.  The huge arch resting, as it appeared, on the monstrous bases of the moors and hills standing round this place, like the mountains about Jerusalem, was one shimmering vault of glory, as if it was there that the home of life had its place, and this earth beneath but a bedroom for mortals, or for those that were too weary to aspire or climb.  The suggestion was enormously powerful.  Here was this mortal earth that needed rest so cruelly—­that must have darkness to refresh its tired eyes, coolness to recuperate its passion, and silence, if ever its ears were to hear again.  But there was radiance unending.  All day a dome of rigid blue; all night a span of glittering lights—­the very home of a glory that knows no waste and that therefore needs no reviving:  it was to that only, therefore, that a life must be chained which would not falter or fail in the unending tides and changes of the world....