--What was it? Some wandering soul? Was it, could it be the
soul of one who had loved him and desired to warn him before it was too
late? Could it have been----and then it came again; and the hair prickled
on his head.
How deathly still it is, and how cold! Ah! was that a rustle outside; a
tap?... In God's name, who can that be?...
And then Hubert licked his dry lips and brought them together and smiled
at Grace, who had come down, opening the doors as she came, to see why he
had not come to bed.
Bah! what a superstitious fool he was, after all!
CHAPTER VI
A DEPARTURE
The months went by happily at Stanfield; and, however ill went the
fortunes of the Church elsewhere, here at least were peace and
prosperity. Most discouraging news indeed did reach them from time to
time. The severe penalties now enacted against the practice of the
Catholic Religion were being enforced with great vigour, and the weak
members of the body began to fail. Two priests had apostatised at
Chichester earlier in the year, one of them actually at the scaffold on
Broyle Heath; and then in December there were two more recantations at
Paul's Cross. Those Catholics too who threw up the Faith generally became
the most aggressive among the persecutors, to testify to their own
consciences, as well to the Protestants, of the sincerity of their
conversion.
But in Stanfield the Church flourished, and Anthony had the great
happiness of receiving his first convert in the person of Mr.
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