“I know it!  I am ready!” cried Dalaber, with the characteristic backward motion of his head.  His face was like the face of a young eagle.  He was quivering from head to foot.

Clarke looked at him again with his fatherly smile, but there was trouble also in his eyes.

“Be not over confident, my son; and seek not to take upon you more than you are able to bear.”

Dalaber understood instantly to what Clarke was alluding.

“I trust I have not done so.  But men will be wanted.  I am a Christian Brother.  I must not shrink.  My word is passed.  Not to you, my master, alone, but to Master Garret also.”

“To whom I did make you known,” spoke Clarke, with a very slight sigh.  “My son, I would not speak one word to discourage your godly zeal; but bethink you what this may mean.  You shall (it may be) be judged and called a heretic; you shall be abhorred of the world; your own friends and kinsfolk shall forsake you; you shall be cast into prison, and none shall dare to help you; you shall be accused before bishops, to your reproach and shame, to the great sorrow of all your friends and kindred.  Then will ye wish ye had never known this doctrine; then (it may be) ye will curse Clarke, and wish you had never known him, because he hath brought you into all these troubles.”

But Dalaber could bear that word no longer; he flung himself at the feet of his master, and the tears broke from his eyes.

“Nay, nay, speak not so, I beseech you; you cut me to the heart!  I boast not of myself as being wiser or braver or more steadfast than other men; I only pray of you to try me.  Send me not away.  Let me be pupil, and scholar, and son.  I cannot turn back, even if I would.  My heart is in the good work.  Let me follow in the path I have chosen.  I have put my hand to the plough; how can I turn back?”

Clarke looked down upon the youth with a world of tender love in his eyes, and raising him up in his arms he kissed him, the tears standing on his own cheeks.

“The Lord God Almighty give you grace and steadfastness now and ever,” he said in a deep voice, full of feeling, “and from henceforth and ever take me for your father in Christ, and I will take you for my son!”

So the compact was sealed between the two; and when on the morrow they took their way towards Oxford, the heart of Anthony Dalaber was joyful within him, for he felt as though he had set his foot upon the narrow path which leads to life everlasting, and he reeked little of the thorns and briers which might beset the way, confident that he would be given grace to overcome.

He was happier still when he was able to obtain the exclusive companionship of Freda Langton in the sunny garden of the Bridge House, and pour into her willing ears all the story of his visit and its wonderful consequences.  To Anthony Dalaber some sympathetic confidante was almost a necessity of existence; and who so well able to understand him as the girl he loved with every fibre of his being, and who had almost promised him an answering love?  There was no peril to her in knowing these things.  The day for making rigorous inquisition in all directions had not yet come, and there was no danger to himself in entrusting his safety to one as true and stanch as this maiden.