Whether or not Jacob relished this adventure, he was too stanch and too honest hearted to turn back now.  The priest lay insensible at the bottom of the boat, his head pillowed upon the cloaks the youths had sacrificed for his better comfort.  It was plainly a matter of consequence that he should soon be housed in some friendly shelter.  His gray face looked ghastly in the dim moonlight which began to struggle through the fog wreaths.  When Cuthbert leaped lightly ashore hard by the bridge, and Jacob sheered off again in the darkness, he felt as though he were out alone on the black river, with only a corpse for company.

“If it were but for Cherry’s sake, I would do ten-fold more,” he murmured, as he glanced up in the direction of the wool stapler’s shop, and pictured pretty Cherry stepping backwards and forwards at her spinning wheel.  “But I trow she will hear naught of it; or if she does, she will think only of Cuthbert’s share.  Alack!  I fear me she will never think of me now.  Why should she, when so proper a youth is nigh?  If he should go away and leave her, perchance her heart might turn to me for comfort; but I fear me he looks every day more tenderly into her bright eyes.  How could he live beneath the roof and not learn to love her?  He would be scarce human, scarce flesh and blood, were he to fail in loving her; and what is my chance beside his?  I might, almost as well yield her at once, and take good Kezzie instead.  Kezzie would make a better housewife—­my mother has told me so a hundred times; and I am fond of her, and methinks she—­”

But there Jacob stopped short, blushing even in the darkness at the thought of what he had nearly said.  Anchoring against the wooden piles of the bridge, and letting his fancy run riot as it would, he indulged in a shifting daydream, in which pain and a vague sense of consolation were oddly blended.  He sighed a good many times, but he smiled once or twice likewise, and at last he gave himself a shake and spoke out aloud.

“At least it shall make no cloud and no bitterness betwixt us twain.  He is a fine lad and a noble one, and he deserves more at Dame Fortune’s hands than such a clown as I. Shall I grudge him his luck if he gets her? never a whit!  There may not be more than one Cherry in the world, but there are plenty of good wives and honest maidens who will brighten a man’s home for him.”

Musing thus, Jacob kept his watch, and was not long in hearing strange and cautious sounds above his head.  Looking up, he beheld a lithe form slipping, in something of a snake fashion, down the woodwork of the bridge, and the next moment Cuthbert sprang softly down, so deftly that the wherry only rolled a little at the shock.

“Hast thought me long?  Hast been frozen with cold?  I have made all the haste I could.  All is planned.  This is not strange work to them.  See, I have brought with me this cradle of cord.  We can place Father Urban within, and they will draw him up from above, that no man shall see him enter their house.  All the windows be shuttered and barred by now.  None will see or hear.  They have harboured many a fugitive before, I take it.  They had all the ropes and needful gear ready beneath their hand at a moment’s notice.”