It was now over two years ago since the thought had first come to him, and since that time he had spared no effort to shape a certain other weapon, which, he thought, would do the business straight and clean.  Yet how difficult it had been to raise any feeling on the point.  At first he had spoken almost freely to this or that Catholic whom he could trust; he had endeavoured to win even Robin; and yet, with hardly an exception, all had drawn back and bidden him be content with a spiritual warfare.  One priest, indeed, had gone so far as to tell him that he was on dangerous ground ... and the one and single man who up to the present had seemed on his side, was the very man, Mr. Ballard, then a layman, whom he had met by chance in London, and who had been the occasion of first suggesting any such idea.  It was, in fact, for the sake of meeting Ballard again that he was going to London; and, he had almost thought from his friend’s last letter, it had seemed that it was for the sake of meeting him that Mr. Ballard was coming across once more.

So the young man sat, with that moody look on his face, until Marjorie came back, wondering what news he would have from Mr. Ballard, and whether the plan, at present only half conceived, was to go forward or be dropped.  He was willing enough, as has been said, to work for priests, and he had been perfectly sincere in his begging Marjorie to come with him for that very purpose; but there was another work which he thought still more urgent....  However, that was not to be Marjorie’s affair....  It was work for men only.

* * * * *

“Here they are,” she said, holding out the packet.

He took them and thanked her.

“I may read them at my leisure?  I may take them with me?”

She had not meant that, but there was no help for it now.

“Why, yes, if you wish,” she said.  “Stay; let me show you which they are.  You may not wish to take them all.”

* * * * *

The letters that the two looked over together in that wainscoted parlour at Booth’s Edge lie now in an iron case in a certain muniment-room.  They are yellow now, and the ink is faded to a pale dusky red; and they must not be roughly unfolded lest they should crack at the creases.  But they were fresh then, written on stout white paper, each occupying one side of a sheet that was then folded three or four times, sealed, and inscribed to “Mistress Marjorie Manners” in the middle, with the word “Haste” in the lower corner.  The lines of writing run close together, and the flourishes on one line interweave now and again with the tails on the next.

The first was written within a week of Robin’s coming to Rheims, and told the tale of the sailing, the long rides that followed it, the pleasure the writer found at coming to a Catholic country, and something of his adventures upon his arrival with his little party.  But names and places were scrupulously omitted.  Dr. Allen was described as “my host”; and, in more than one instance, the name of a town was inscribed with a line drawn beneath it to indicate that this was a kind of alias.