Cuthbert’s eyes lighted.  A slight thrill ran through him.  He recalled the words recently spoken to him by his whilom friends.  But all he said was: 

“Verily men are ever whispering.  It was the same cry when I was here a year agone, and no great thing has happened; wherefore this new fear?”

Jacob shook his head.  His answer was spoken in a slow, ponderous fashion.

“Men will speak and whisper; yet the world wags on as before, and men well-nigh cease to listen or heed.  But mark my word, Cuthbert, there be no smoke where there is not fire; and these Papists, who are for ever plotting, plotting, plotting, will one day spring some strange thing upon the world.  There be so many cries of ‘Wolf!’ that folks begin to smile and say the real wolf will never come.  But that follows not.  I like not this ever-restless secret scheming and gathering together in dark corners.  It is not for their religion that I hate and distrust the Papists.  I know little about matters of controversy.  I meddle not in things too high for me.  But I hate them for their subtlety, their deceitful ways, their lying, and their fraud.  Thou knowest how they schemed and plotted the death of good Queen Bess; we citizens of London find it hard to forgive them that!  We love not the son of this same Mary Stuart, whom of old the Papists strove to give us for our Queen; yet he is our lawful King, accepted by the nation as our sovereign; and failing him I know not whom we might choose to reign over us.  Wherefore say I, Down with these schemers and plotters!  If men wish their grievances redressed, let them work in the light and not in the dark.  We Protestants know that it is Bible law that evil must never be done that good may come; but the Papists hold that they may do never so many crimes and evil deeds if they may but win some point of theirs at last.  Thou dost not hold such false doctrine, I trow, Cuthbert? thou art a soul above such false seeming.”

Cuthbert drew his brows together in a thoughtful reverie.

“I trow thou hast the right of it, Jacob,” he answered.  “I love not dark scheming, nor love I these endless plots.  Yet in these days of oppression it must be hard for men to act openly.  If they be driven to secret methods, the fault is less theirs than that of their rulers.”

“There be faults on both sides, I doubt not,” answered Jacob, with calm toleration.  “But two evils make not one good; and the Puritans who suffer in like fashion do not plot to overthrow their rulers.”

“How knowest thou that the Papists do?” asked Cuthbert quickly.

“It has always been their way,” answered Jacob; “and though I know but little of the meaning of the sinister whispers I hear, we have but to look back to former days to see how it has ever been.  Think of the two plots of this very reign, the ‘Bye’ and the ‘Main’!  What was their object but the subversion of the present rulers?  What they have tried before they will