“He has been here three or four days.  The rooms are full in the ... in the usual place.  And I have spoken with him; he is coming here after supper.  He had already supped.”

Marjorie leaned back in her chair; but she said nothing.  From beneath in the house came the sound of singing, from the tavern parlour where boys were performing madrigals.

It seemed to her incredible that she should presently be speaking with the man, whose name was already affecting England as perhaps no priest’s name had ever affected it.  He had been in England, she knew, comparatively a short time; yet in that time, his name had run like fire from mouth to mouth.  To the minds of Protestants there was something almost diabolical about the man; he was here, he was there, he was everywhere, and yet, when the search was up, he was nowhere.  Tales were told of his eloquence that increased the impression that he made a thousand-fold; it was said that he could wile birds off their branches and the beasts from their lairs; and this eloquence, it was known, could be heard only by initiates, in far-off country houses, or in quiet, unsuspected places in the cities.  He preached in some shrouded and locked room in London one day; and the next, thirty miles off, in a cow-shed to rustics.  And his learning and his subtlety were equal to his eloquence:  her Grace had heard him at Oxford years ago, before his conversion; and, it was said, would refuse him nothing, even now, if he would but be reasonable in his religion; even Canterbury, it was reported, might be his.  And if he would not be reasonable—­then, as was fully in accordance with what was known of her Grace, nothing was too bad for him.

Such feeling then, on the part of Protestants, found its fellow in that of the Catholics.  He was their champion, as no other man could be.  Had he not issued his famous “challenge” to any and all of the Protestant divines, to meet them in any argument on religion that they cared to select, in any place and at any time, if only his own safe-conduct were secure?  And was it not notorious that none would meet him?  He was, indeed, a fire, a smoke in the nostrils of his adversaries, a flame in the hearts of his friends.  Everywhere he ranged, he and his comrade, Father Persons, sometimes in company, sometimes apart; and wherever they went the Faith blazed up anew from its dying embers, in the lives of rustic knave and squire.

And she was to see him!

* * * * *

“He is here for four or five days only,” went on Anthony presently, still in a low, cautious voice.  “The hunt is very hot, they say.  Not even the host knows who he is; or, at least, makes that he does not.  He is under another name, of course; it is Mr. Edmonds, this time.  He was in Essex, he tells me; but comes to the wolves’ den for safety.  It is safer, he says, to sit secure in the midst of the trap, than to wander about its doors; for when the doors are opened he can run out again, if no one knows he is there....”