Come Rack! Come Rope! | Page 3

the
privilege of not attending Protestant worship; and, indeed, had been
forced last year to sell a piece of land over on Lees Moor for this very
purpose. Priests came and went at their peril.... He himself had fought
two or three battles over the affair in St. Peter's churchyard, until he
had learned to hold his tongue. But all this was just part of the game. It
seemed to him as inevitable and eternal as the changes of the weather.
Matstead Church, he knew, had once been Catholic; but how long ago
he did not care to inquire. He only knew that for awhile there had been
some doubt on the matter; and that before Mr. Barton's time, who was
now minister there, there had been a proper priest in the place, who had
read English prayers there and a sort of a mass, which he had attended
as a little boy. Then this had ceased; the priest had gone and Mr. Barton
come, and since that time he had never been to church there, but had
heard the real mass wherever he could with a certain secrecy. And there
might be further perils in future, as there might be thunderstorms or
floods. There was still the memory of the descent of the Commissioners
a year or two after his birth; he had been brought up on the stories of
riding and counter-riding, and the hiding away of altar-plate and beads
and vestments. But all this was in his bones and blood; it was as natural
that professors of the false religion should seek to injure and distress
professors of the true, as that the foxes should attack the poultry-yard.
One took one's precautions, one hoped for the best; and one was quite
sure that one day the happy ancient times his mother had told him of
would come back, and Christ's cause be vindicated.
And now the foundations of the earth were moved and heaven reeled
above him; for his father, after a month or two of brooding, had
announced, on St. Stephen's Day, that he could tolerate it no longer;
that God's demands were unreasonable; that, after all, the Protestant
religion was the religion of her Grace, that men must learn to move
with the times, and that he had paid his last fine. At Easter, he observed,
he would take the bread and wine in Matstead Church, and Robin
would take them too.

II
The sun stood half-way towards his setting as Robin rode up from the
valley, past Padley, over the steep ascent that led towards Booth's Edge.
The boy was brighter a little as he came up; he had counted above
eighty snipe within the last mile and a half, and he was coming near to
Marjorie. About him, rising higher as he rose, stood the great
low-backed hills. Cecily stepped out more sharply, snuffing delicately,
for she knew her way well enough by now, and looked for a feed; and
the boy's perplexities stood off from him a little. Matters must surely be
better so soon as Marjorie's clear eyes looked upon them.
Then the roofs of Padley disappeared behind him, and he saw the
smoke going up from the little timbered Hall, standing back against its
bare wind-blown trees.
A great clatter and din of barking broke out as the mare's hoofs
sounded on the half-paved space before the great door; and then, in the
pause, a gaggling of geese, solemn and earnest, from out of sight. Jacob
led the outcry, a great mastiff, chained by the entrance, of the breed of
which three are set to meet a bear and four a lion. Then two harriers
whipped round the corner, and a terrier's head showed itself over the
wall of the herb-garden on the left, as a man, bareheaded, in his shirt
and breeches, ran out suddenly with a thonged whip, in time to meet a
pair of spaniels in full career. Robin sat his horse silently till peace was
restored, his right leg flung across the pommel, untwisting Agnes' leash
from his fist. Then he asked for Mistress Marjorie, and dropped to the
ground, leaving his mare and falcon in the man's hands, with an air.
He flicked his fingers to growling Jacob as he went past to the side
entrance on the east, stepped in through the little door that was beside
the great one, and passed on as he had been bidden into the little court,
turned to the left, went up an outside staircase, and so down a little
passage to the ladies' parlour, where he knocked upon the door. The
voice he knew called to him from within; and he went in, smiling to
himself. Then he took the girl who awaited him there in both his