“It is Father Urban; we may not withstand him.”

Still the anger of the mob was not calmed in a moment, and fierce voices exclaimed in threatening accents: 

“A spy! he is a spy!”

“Then bring him hither to me; I will judge him,” said the priest, in the same tones of calm assurance.  “If I find him worthy of death, I will give him over to your hands again.”

“That will do; Father Urban shall judge him!” cried a brawny fellow who seemed to be something of a leader with his fellows.  “The Father never lied to us yet.  He will give him back if he finds him a spy.”

Cuthbert was now jostled and hustled, but not in the same angry fashion, to a small narrow door in a deep embrasure, and when this door presently swung back on its hinges, the crowd surged quickly backwards as though in some sort afraid.  Within the narrow doorway stood the priest, a small, slim man in rusty black, with a crucifix suspended from his rosary, which he held up before the crowd, who most of them crossed themselves with apparent devotion.

“Peace be with you, my children!” was his somewhat incongruous salutation to the blood-thirsty mob; and then turning his bright but benignant eyes upon Cuthbert, he said: 

“This is a leper house, my son.  Yet methinks thou wilt be safer here a while than in the street.  Dost thou fear to enter?  If thou dost, we must e’en talk where we are.”

“I have no fear,” answered Cuthbert, who indeed only experienced a lively curiosity.

The priest seemed pleased with the answer, and drew him within the sheltering door; and Cuthbert followed his guide into a long, low room, where a table was spread with trenchers and pitchers, whilst an appetizing odour arose from a saucepan simmering on the fire and stirred by one of the patients, upon whom Cuthbert gazed with fascinated interest.

“He is well nigh cured,” answered the priest.  “Our sick abide on the floor above; but there be not many here now.  The plague carried off above half our number last year.

“But now of thine own matters, boy:  how comest thou hither?  Thou art a bold lad to venture a stranger into these haunts, unless thou be fleeing a worse peril from the arm of the law; and neither thy face nor thy dress looks like that.  Hast thou not heard of Whitefriars and its perils? or art thou a rustic knave, unversed in the ways of the town?”

Cuthbert told his story frankly enough.  He had lost himself in the streets, and was in the forbidden region before he well knew.  A few kindly and dexterous questions from Father Urban led him to tell all that there was to know about himself, his parentage and his past; and the priest listened with great attention, scanning the face of the youth narrowly the while.

“Trevlyn—­the name is known to us.  It was a good old name once, and may be still again.  I have seen thy father, Nicholas Trevlyn.  It may be I shall see him again one day.  Be true to thy father’s faith, boy; be not led away by hireling shepherds.  The day is coming on England when the true faith shall spread from end to end of the land, and all heretics shall be confounded!  See that thou art in thy place in that day!  See that thou art found by thy father’s side in the hour of victory!”