But not even to his brothers did he tell all that he had heard and all that he knew.  The words of the gospel in the familiar language of his country haunted him persistently.  He felt a strange wish to hear more, although he believed the wish to be sin, and strove against it might and main.  Some of the passages clung tenaciously to his memory, and he fell asleep repeating them.  When he woke the words were yet in his mind, and they seemed to get between him and the words of his task that day when the boys went to their tutor for daily instruction.

Brother Emmanuel had never found Edred so inattentive and absent before.  He divined that the boy must have something on his mind, and let him alone.  He was not surprised that he lingered when the others had gone, and then in a low voice asked his preceptor if he would meet him in the chantry, as he felt he could not be happy till he had made confession of a certain matter, done penance, and received absolution.

A request of that sort never met a denial from the monk.  He sent Edred to the chantry to pray for an hour, and met him there at the end of that time to listen to all he had to say.

Edred’s story was soon told—­nothing held back, not even the innermost thoughts of his heart—­and the expression of the face beneath the enshrouding cowl was something strange to see.

It was long before the monk spoke, and meantime Edred lay prostrate at his feet, thankful to transfer the burden weighing him down to the keeping of another, but little guessing what the burden was to him to whom he made this confession.

Well did Brother Emmanuel know and recognize the peril of entertaining such thoughts, longings, and aspirations as were now assailing the heart of this unconscious boy.  That there was sin in all these feelings he did not doubt; that heavy penance must be done for them he would not for a moment have wished to deny.  But yet when he came to place reason in the place of the formulas of the Church in which he had been reared, he knew not how to condemn that longing after the Word of God which was generally the first step towards the dreaded sin of heresy.

No one more sincerely abhorred the name and the sin of heresy.  When men denied the presence of the living God in the sacraments of the Church, or attacked its time-honoured practices in which the heart of the young monk was bound up, then the whole soul of the enthusiast rose up in revolt, and he felt that such blasphemers well deserved the fiery doom they brought upon themselves.  But when their sin was possessing a copy of the living Word; when all that could be alleged against them was that they met together to read that Word which was denied to them by their lawful pastors and teachers, and which they had no opportunity of hearing otherwise—­then indeed did it seem a hard thing that they should be so mercilessly condemned and persecuted.