With Walter Cole there was no such hindrance to friendship, and just at this juncture Cuthbert prosecuted and confirmed his intimacy at that house by constant visits there.  He was greedy of information and book learning, and in this narrow dim dwelling, literally stacked with books, papers, and pamphlets of all kinds, and partially given over to the mysteries of the printing press, seldom worked save at dead of night, Cuthbert’s expanding mind could revel to its full content.

He devoured every book upon which he could lay hands—­history, theology, philosophy; nothing came amiss to him.  He would sit by the hour watching Anthony Cole at work setting type, asking him innumerable questions about what he had been last reading, and finding the white-headed bookseller a perfect mine of information.

Controversy and the vexed topics of the day were generally avoided by common consent.  The Coles had learned through bitter experience the necessity for silence and reticence.  Everybody knew them for ardent and devoted sons of Rome, and they were under suspicion of issuing many of the pamphlets against the policy of the King that raised ire in the hearts of the great ones of the land.  But none of these “seditious” writings had so far been traced to them, and they still lived in comparative peace, although the tranquillity somewhat resembled that of the peaceful dwellers upon the sides of a volcanic mountain, within whose crater grumblings and mutterings are heard from time to time.

Cuthbert’s frequent visits, and the manifest pleasure he took in their society, were a source of pleasure to both father and son; and though they never showed this pleasure too openly, or asked him to continue his visits or help them in their night work, they did not refuse his help when offered, and sometimes would look at each other and say: 

“He is drawing nearer; he is drawing nearer.  Old traditions, race instincts, are telling upon him.  He is too true a Trevlyn not to become a member of the true fold.  His vagrant fancy is straying here and there.  He is tasting the bitter-sweet fruit of knowledge and restless search after the wisdom of this world.  But already he begins to turn with loathing from the cold, lifeless Puritan code.  Anon he will find that the Established Church has naught to give him save the husk, from which the precious grain has been carefully extracted.”

“Father Urban thinks well of him,” Walter once remarked, as they discussed the youth after his departure one evening.  “He has met him, I know not where, and believes that there may be work for him to do yet.  We want those with us who have the single mind and honest heart, the devotion that counts not the cost.  All that is written on the lad’s face.  If he breaks not away from us, he may become a tool in a practised hand to do a mighty work.”

Cuthbert, however, went on his way all unconscious of the notice he was arousing in certain quarters.  His mind was filled just now with other matters than those of religious controversy.  He had become rather weary of the strife of tongues, and was glad to busy himself with the practical concerns of life that did not always land him in a dilemma or a difficulty.