It was but a short run when he had come down into the court, by the little staircase that led from the men’s rooms; the ground was soaking with the rains of yesterday, but he cared nothing for that; and, as the riding party turned up the little ascent that led beneath the churchyard, Robin, on the other side of the wall, was keeping between the tombstones to see, and not be seen.

It was within an hour of dawn, at that time when the sky begins to glimmer with rifts above the two horizons, showing light enough at least to distinguish faces.  It was such a light as that in which he had seen the deer looking at him motionless as he rode home with Dick.  Yet the three who now rode up towards him were so muffled about the faces that he feared he would not know them.  They were men, all three of them; and he could make out valises strapped to the saddle of each; but, what seemed strange, they did not speak as they came; and it appeared as if they wished to make no more noise than was necessary, since one of them, when his horse set his foot upon the cobblestones beside the lych-gate, pulled him sharply off them.

And then, just as they rounded the angle of the wall where the boy crouched peeping, the man that rode in the middle, sighed as if with relief, and pulled the cloak that was about him, so that the collar fell from his face, and at the same time turned to his companion on his right, and said something in a low voice.

But the boy heard not a word; for he found himself staring at the thin-faced young priest from whom he had received Holy Communion at Padley.  It was but for an instant; for the man to whom the priest spoke answered in the same low voice, and the other pulled his cloak again round his mouth.

Yet the look was enough.  The sight, once more, of this servant of God, setting out again upon his perilous travels—­seen at such a moment, when the boy’s judgment hung in the balance (as he thought); this one single reminder of what a priest could do in these days of sorrow, and of what God called on him to do—­the vision, for it was scarcely less, all things considered, of a life such as this—­presented, so to say, in this single scene of a furtive and secret ride before the dawn, leaving Padley soon after midnight—­this, falling on a soul that already leaned that way, finished that for which Marjorie had prayed, and against which the lad himself had fought so fiercely.

* * * * *

Half an hour later he stood by his father’s bed, looking down on him without fear.

“Father,” he said, as the old man stared up at him through sleep-ridden eyes, “I have come to give you my answer.  It is that I must go to Rheims and be a priest.”

Then he turned again and went out of the room, without waiting.

CHAPTER IX

I

Mrs. Manners was still abed when her daughter came in to see her.  She lay in the great chamber that gave upon the gallery above the hall whence, on either side, she could hear whether or no the maids were at their business—­which was a comfort to her if a discomfort to them.  And now that her lord was in Derby, she lay here all alone.