The following morning Annys sought out Richard Meryl to learn more of the refugee. As he was conducted to the hiding-place, young Meryl related something of the women who were risking so much for a stranger.

"I am bringing you to old Dame Westel and her granddaughter Matilda," he said. "When Matilda was but a babe in arms, her father, tempted by the bait of large wages in Suffolk, was returned by the sheriffs, branded. But his wife being big with child, and he watching her cheeks grow hollow day by day, he grew desperate and made a second attempt. For this he was thrown into gaol and suffered to lie there and rot. He died of gangrene of both feet while his wife slowly starved to death, and her babe within her."

"Horrible, horrible!" exclaimed Annys; "there is more justice done to kine than to man made in the image of God. O my God! how long can this be endured?"

"Ay! thy cry of patience burns on thy tongue, doth it not?"

"Ay, so. But tell me some more."

"You will see for yourself. The poor old woman lives only for two things—to hide others who should pass through, and to pore over a torn and dog-eared copy of the Bible which a poor priest did leave with her."

Annys was much interested. "Ah, she will get much comfort and peace from the Holy Book."

The young man laughed. "As to that, I wot not; rather she does suck the vengeance and wrath from its pages e'en as a babe sucks its mother's milk."

"Say you so? 'Tis ill, indeed. I shall change all that, and bring speedy comfort to her."

"Well, thou hast a bold heart, then. I wish thee joy of thy task."

"Lives she all by herself?"

Richard colored. "Nay, her granddaughter, Matilda, is an angel if ever one walked this earth. She does devote herself to the old woman, and yet never is word of complaint suffered to pass her lips."

"And that is all?"

"Oh," he replied, with a shrug of his shoulders, "no one counts the other granddaughter, a sullen, proud beauty, the illegitimate daughter of the old Baron de Leaufort, uncle of the present one, and long since gone to Hell if ever sinner went there."

"Poor woman! she seems to have had trouble enough."

"Trouble! Ay! And yet, alas, the tale is not a rare one. It is hard to have faith in the goodness of God when one sounds all the misery on earth."

"The works of God are hidden among men," replied Annys, gravely, as they came to one of the humblest of the wattled huts that made up the village, and paused before it.

"'They shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.' The poor shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Ha! ha!"

The voice came from within.

Outside on a low stool, engaged in her spinning, sat a lovely young girl, in whose sweet, open countenance, touched with a gentle gravity beyond her years, the poor priest recognized Matilda Westel.

He inquired after the refugee and was told that he was resting, and that at daybreak he was to be taken to the highway and instructed how to make the next town before nightfall. His garb had been neatly repaired, and a new staff found for him. Annys offered to give him a rosary.

"Would thy grandmother care to see me?" he asked.

A quick look passed from the girl to Richard, who stood by her side.

"Tell him," she begged the young man, who seemed to hesitate how to begin.

"In what way can I serve thee?" Annys asked.

"Matilda's grandmother," began Richard, "can read only very little. She has picked up enough to read only a few texts which that poor priest of whom I spake to you taught her by heart. It has ever been her desire to read further in the Book."

"And if it be not too much trouble," continued the girl, "I had hoped perhaps that I might be taught also to read, that my eyes might save grandmother's old and tired ones."

"Yea, that she might be her eyes, as she has been for years her head and feet and hands," exclaimed Richard, heartily, and Annys caught the look of love that illumined his face as his eyes rested on her. It heartened the poor priest to be in the presence of an affection which was so far removed from the morbid hysterical emotion of the monks and saints, whose confessions had always disgusted rather than edified him.

"Shall we go in?" ventured Annys, and, receiving the young girl's permission, he entered the low door and discovered a wrinkled old dame seated on a low stool poring over a copy of Wyclif's Vulgate, crooning over to herself certain lines which she had evidently learned by heart.

"'They shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.' The poor of this earth shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Is it not so, Sir Poor Priest?"

On his entrance, she had risen, and almost shrieked this in her thin, cracked treble.

"Yea, surely, surely," answered the poor priest soothingly, "the good Book hath it so."

She looked up into his face eagerly, and searched it with her dim eyes.

"Robert Annys, they tell me that you do learn poor folk to read—see, I wot well what is here, 'Give none occasion to a man to curse thee, for if he curse thee, in the bitterness of his soul, he that made him will hear his supplication.'

"And here," she continued, seating herself and bending low over the book as she rapidly turned the pages with her trembling fingers, "here Solomon saith, 'that no king had other beginning, but all men have one entrance into life and a like departure.' Oh, that I wot right well, but there is more, there is more, that I would read for myself; there is a part which ever I seek which tells that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Show me that, and if canst help me read the wonderful Book, then shall a poor woman's blessing follow thee all the days of thy life."

Annys regarded her pityingly. "Right gladly will I help thee. And I shall tell thee of other parts of Holy Writ that speak of Love and Forgiveness, and teach thee that part which saith, 'Love your enemies and forgive those that trespass against you.'"

But the old woman flung the book straightway at his head in a passion, crying, "I will none of thy book; and it says that, I want none of it. Not for that would I toil and wear out mine eyes reading it. Nay, nay, thou art wrong. Thou dost seek to pull the wool over mine eyes. For doth not the good Book say:—

And, quite exhausted by her tirade, she sank back again on her stool. Annys bent over her, greatly shocked, and took one of her hands in his and stroked it tenderly.

"Yet, my good woman," he said, in low, gentle tones, "yet is there not more comfort in love and forgiveness, than in revengeful wrath and hate?"

The old woman snatched away her hand and swayed to and fro, beating the floor with one foot and moaning softly.

"Oh, these priests, these priests," at last she broke out fiercely, "they wot not a tenth part of our woes, or they could not find it in their hearts to prate ever of love and forgiveness."

"I but seek to bring peace to thy heart," remonstrated Annys, "for peace can never enter save through love. Besides, how canst thou say the Lord's prayer? Doth it not say: 'Forgive us our sins, as we forgive them that have misdone against us'?"

"Nay!" returned the old woman, stubbornly, "I do pray to that God who said, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'"

He was about to touch on his favorite theme, the new spirit of Charity and Love that the Christ had brought into the sterner religion of the Old Testament, but now she burst forth even more vehemently, rising and tossing her arms high over her head.

"What is thy boasted religion that would take from an old woman her sole comfort?

"'Love mine enemies,' indeed! Does good God expect me to love that Baron de Leaufort—now suffering the torments of hell-fire, if ever sinner doth—who made merry within his castle, while my daughter, my beautiful, merry Rose, lay forgotten on the moat, brought there through him? And am I to love those lawmakers at Westminster who say that no man may move hand or foot to seek an honest living, but must stay rooted in the earth where he happened to grow, like a rotting trunk? Oh, yes, one may wander from Lincoln to London if it be but for merrymaking and foolishness; but no man may travel to the next county if it be to place bread between the teeth of his children. Bah! a fig care I for thy kind of religion! Begone, begone, with thy smooth tongue and thy sleek face, begone!"

But Annys did not go. Sighing heavily, he said: "My poor woman, take such comfort as is left to thee. I shall come again to-morrow and I shall teach thee such texts as thou wilt have. Indeed, I shall teach also thy granddaughter that she may aid thee. Be comforted, I pray thee," and, with a warm pressure of the hand, he was gone.

His heart was heavy that night. Was this, then, to be the end of placing the Bible in the hands of the people? Was their God to be a God of Vengeance and Wrath instead of Charity and Love? Instead of coming nearer Christ Jesus, were they to be further from Him than ever?

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