Come Rack! Come Rope!

came up; he had counted above eighty snipe within the last mile and a half, and he was coming near to Marjorie. About him, rising higher as he rose, stood the great low-backed h

ter so soon as Marjorie's

he saw the smoke going up from the little timbered

hich three are set to meet a bear and four a lion. Then two harriers whipped round the corner, and a terrier's head showed itself over the wall of the herb-garden on the left, as a man, bareheaded, in his shirt and breeches, ran out suddenly with a thonged whip, in time to meet a pair

he little court, turned to the left, went up an outside staircase, and so down a little passage to the ladies' parlour, where he knocked upon the door. The voice he knew called to him from within; an

ew off his hat with the pheasa

*

d her in the enclosed garden. But the low frosty sunlight lay in it now, upon the blue painted wainscot that rose half up the walls, the tall presses where the linen lay, the pieces of stuff, embroidered with pale lutes and wreaths that Mistress Manners had bought in Derby, h

e you," she said, "wh

rdered heap, and came to sit beside him.

his very contrary in all respects. Where he was fair, she was pale and dark; his eyes

u bring with you now

aded

Manners?

ad said not a word on either side-neither he to his father nor she to her parents. They believed, as young persons do, that parents who bring children into the

again," he said, "whil

*

n, her steel-buckled shoes. He told her that he loved her better in that than in her costume of state-the ruff, the fardingale, the brocaded petticoat, and all the rest-in which he had seen her once last summer at Babington House. He talked then, when she would hear no more of that, of Tuesday seven-night, when they would meet for hawking in the lower chase of the Padley estates; and proceeded then to speak of Agnes

ou have talked of this and that and Agnes and Jock, and Padley chase,

ter continually since his father had spoken to him on Saint Stephen's night; and at one time it seemed that his father was acting the part of a traitor and at another of a philosopher. If it were indeed true, after all, that all men were turning Protestant, and that there was not so much difference between the two religio

ght think, for that was the very thing that he thought that he thought

ind?" he asked. "Is it not enough reason

ly, with a pleas

ok," she said. "What else are

er hand again at that

u have told m

n he t

gion. It was then that Robin had seen moodiness succeed to anger, and long silence to moodiness. He told the tale with a true lover's art, for he watched her face and trained his tone and his manner as he saw he

he was finishing, and her eyes like sunset pools;

silence!"

him, my dear; he is my

nce or twice, and a great pensiveness came down on her

he talked to herself, "is whether you had bes

with his dismay com

, full of a sudden ten

misery. I was thinking but of Christ's honour. You must forgive me…. What must

ays like that. He asks counsel from no one. He thinks

wondering, searching round the hanging above the chimney-breast. (It presented Icarus in the char

o tampering with the old religion. He had known that it must be so; yet he had thought, on the way here, of a dozen families he knew who, in his own memory, had changed from allegiance to the Pope of Rome to that of her Grace, without seeming one penny the worse. There were the Martins, down there in Derby; the Squire and his lady of Ashenden Hall; the Conways of Matlock; and the rest-these had all change

eak, and twice she closed them again. Robin continued to str

do not see what else is to be done. He will think, perhaps, that if you have a little time to think you will come over to him. Well, that

cons

to Dethick

far enough aw

here," he sugg

hone in her mouth, and pas

er," she said. "We must think…

smiled

great affair," he said. "He is

r Ro

ust to me. He is a

t all the sad

other way?" he

anced

tand him to the face. W

ing you tell me,

ines for you, I have no doubt, unless you went away altogether. But I think you had better go away for this time. He will almost expect it, I think. At first he will think that you will yield to him; and then, little by little (unless

onsider

I can train falcons and hounds and break horses. I

ng!" she s

*

were to quarrel with his father? There was the Religion which was in their bones and blood-the Religion for which already they had suffered and their fathers before them. There was the honour and loyalty which this new and more personal suffering demanded now louder than ever; and in Marjorie at least, as will be seen more plainly later, there was a strong love of Jesus Christ and His Mother, whom she knew, from her hidden crucifix and her beads, and her Jesus Psalter-which she used every day-as well as in her own soul-to be wandering together once more amon

of the Commissioners that had been to Derbyshire once and would come again, or of the alarms and the dangers and the priest hunters, since those things did not at present touch them very closely. It was rather of Robin's father, and whether and when the maid should