“What has she not done?” cried Anthony.  “She keeps herself for the most part in her house; and my sister spends a great deal of time with her; but her men, who would die for her, I think, go everywhere; and half the hog-herds and shepherds of the Peak are her sworn men.  I have given your Dick to her; he was mad to do what he could in that cause.  So her men go this way and that bearing her letters or her messages to priests who are on their way through the county; and she gets news—­God knows how!—­of what is a-stirring against us.  She has saved Mr. Ludlam twice, and Mr. Garlick once, as well as Mr. Simpson once, by getting the news to them of the pursuivants’ coming, and having them away into the Peak.  And yet with all this, she has never been laid by the heels.”

“Have they been after her, then?” asked Robin eagerly.

“They have had a spy in her house twice to my knowledge, but never openly; and never a shred of a priest’s gown to be seen, though mass had been said there that day.  But they have never searched it by force.  And I think they do not truly suspect her at all.”

“Did I not say so?” cried Robin.  “And what of my father?  He wrote to me that he was to be made magistrate; and I have never written to him since.”

“He hath been made magistrate,” said Anthony drily; “and he sits on the bench with the rest of them.”

“Then he is all of the same mind?”

“I know nothing of his mind.  I have never spoken with him this six years back.  I know his acts only.  His name was in the ‘Bond of Association,’ too!”

“I have heard of that.”

“Why, it is two years old now.  Half the gentry of England have joined it,” said Anthony bitterly.  “It is to persecute to the death any pretender to the Crown other than our Eliza.”

There was a pause.  Robin understood the bitterness.

“And what of Mr. Ballard?” asked Robin.

“Yes; he is taken,” said Anthony slowly, watching him.  “He was taken a week ago.”

“Will they banish him, then?”

“I think they will banish him.”

“Why, yes—­it is the first time he hath been taken.  And there is nothing great against him?”

“I think there is not,” said Anthony, still with that strange deliberateness.

“Why do you look at me like that?”

Anthony stood up without answering.  Then he began to pace about.  As he passed the door he looked to the bolt carefully.  Then he turned again to his friend.

“Robin,” he said, “would you sooner know a truth that will make you unhappy, or be ignorant of it?”

“Does it concern myself or my business?” asked Robin promptly.

“It concerns you and every priest and every Catholic in England.  It is what I have hinted to you before.”

“Then I will hear it.”

“It is as if I told it in confession?”

Robin paused.

“You may make it so,” he said, “if you choose.”