The two made their way, not without some difficulty, towards the part of the fair grounds where the sheep were for sale. This was the spot selected by the leaders of the rebellion. Merchants and chapmen on all sides of them were shouting encouragement for the passers-by to stop and purchase of them.

"Wimples, wimples! Sure 'tis not in thy heart to refuse thy lass to bind up her pretty hair with one of these."

"Girdles! here they are, silver and gold of the finest."

"Crosses, crosses, jewelled, inlaid, carved ivory crucifixes. Here is a glowing gem for my lady's prie-dieux."

"Here, Sir Knight, give this altar cloth to Holy Church and receive many days' grace for it—one day for each thread in this golden fringe."

"Furs, furs, the cold winter will soon be upon us. Overlook not my choice stock of ermines and beaver."

"Faugh!" cried a man passing by. "'Cold winter,' indeed; one would think to hear these fellows that the aim of the great folks is to keep warm with the fur they pile upon their garments."

"Well, mayhap they try to keep warm the ground," joined in another, "for they do stick their furs about the tails of their gowns instead of about their necks and wrists, where there would be some sense to it."

"Talking of tails," grinned a man who was a tailor by trade, "why, it will come about shortly that no workshop in all the land will be large enough to cut out a fine robe if the trains grow much longer. We shall all of us have to take to the fields to cut out our gowns."

"Indeed," said another, "I cannot for the life of me see any reason for the wearing of fur save it is as a hiding-place for fleas."

"There you are in error," retorted the tailor, who was also a bit of a philosopher; "you forget that it is forbidden by law to all but the great folk to wear fur, ergo do not say that it hath no uses. Remember an article is prized just so far as it is difficult for others to get it."

The voices of the merchants, always persuasive, continued to reach Annys and his companion. "Here you are, my beauties. Don't pass by. Here is the famous recipe to keep the skin ever white and smooth, of sweet almonds blanched, of gum dragant and of gum arabic, of the flower of beans, of the root of the fleur-de-lis, of dried fish glue—"

"Give not away all thy secrets, fellow," interrupted a passer-by, with a laugh; "we can all go home and make up thy recipe for ourselves."

"Ah, but you will not know the correct proportions, and without that the virtue of the compound is not there," replied the man, no whit disconcerted.

"Ointments, ointments, rare and precious ointments," cried a rival, "musks, vermillion lip salves, clothes of pure scarlet dye to keep the cheeks ever young. Ah, lass, just approach here and see if a touch of this on thy cheeks does not make thy fellow come hurrying back to thee."

"Waters of daffodils," from the other side.

"Grape juice and tarragon mixed, sweet waters of oranges, roses, jessamine," flung back from opposite.

And at last they heard about them the kind of talk that showed they had reached their destination.

"Nay, I have rubbed my fingers off me and the skin yet keeps pale. I tell ye 'tis rotten, and I'll none of it."

"Why, man, look you, pull on that wool, and you could not tear it, had you the strength of Hercules."

"If the hoar frost of the morning melt on the wool, be sure there is an unnatural heat somewhere."

"I tell you the veins under the eyes are white. Do you need further proof?"

"And I tell thee a ruby could not be redder."

Yet with all the talk going on about them of sheep and their distempers, men nevertheless found opportunity to greet one another with the secret signal which showed that they were members of the Great Society.

"June the twelfth, then?"

"So long?"

"Plenty to do 'twixt now and then."

"Hush!"

"And I tell thee what to do with a sheep that dies."

"The whole country is to rise. There will not remain one man at the plough—as I was saying, soak the flesh well in water and keep it there from daybreak till nones, and—"

"Wot ye, whether the men of Hertforshire are with us?"

"And keep it and drain it thoroughly and salt it and dry it, and it will do for your laborers."

"Ha, ha, ha!"

"Ho, ho, ho!"

"Yea, there be not one man who is not ready to join in the march."

"And if there be one unready, we know an argument or two that will bring him around."

"Here be Robert Annys and Jack the smith."

The greetings exchanged were hearty.

The men spoke cautiously among themselves, every now and then interjecting some talk of sheep into their conversation when one approached who did not give the signal.

"I tell you, from Lincolnshire to Sussex the country is like dry timber ready to ignite at a spark."

"Ay, come next Whitsunday, please God, the lords will know who are the real masters."

"The land will not groan under so many sheriffs."

"And not so many lawyers will cumber the ground."

"Ah, my men, have a care, have a care," broke in Annys, "lest they do say with reason that we are but ne'er-do-wells grasping for power. If envy and greed are thought to be prodding us on, our cause is as good as lost."

"Well, they have had their day long enough," grumbled the sturdy smith.

Wat the cobbler, ever ready to make the peace, now joined in. "Hast got big Ben and his men to join us?" he asked of the smith.

"Well," was the answer, "I left him swaying this way and that like a tree that yet needs the last stroke to fall."

"Let us look to it, then, that the last stroke be not put in by the other side," was the ready reply.

"Who will go to Kent and see that all is in readiness for the march on the gaol? There must be no half-hearted ones there."

"To go to Kent now is to clap one's head into the Archbishop's noose," replied a Kentish man. "Ball's boast that he would be set free by hundreds of men marching from afar hath made even the sheriffs look alive."

"I will go," said Annys, quietly.

"No russet priest may show his face near Canterbury."

"Then shall I go disguised as a minstrel, and men shall know me by my songs."

"And get a broken pate for thy pains," said a disgruntled minstrel, who well knew of what he spoke.

"Oh, the cause must not suffer for want of a broken pate or two," replied Annys, merrily. But the truth was he really welcomed the opportunity with all his heart. He wanted work, and work with the zest of danger in it was all the better. He wanted some absorbing task, some task that would claim his whole mind and soul, that would shut out from him the terrible struggle that he had been waging for the past few days.

When he left the Fair with all the details arranged to slip off secretly to Kent, he held his head higher than he had done for many a day. Now he was a man again, now he had cast off that evil self, he was ready to sacrifice himself for his fellow-men, ready to lay down his life for them if need be. Work, work, work—that was man's salvation from temptation; not physical torture and isolation, but work that meant a flinging of the whole being into some great interest, swallowing up every thought unconnected with it. As he walked rapidly along, that Robert Annys who had permitted himself to become so harassed by a passing lovesickness seemed like some other man. Surely it could not have been he, Robert Annys, Saviour of the Oppressed, Leader of the Downtrodden People, Teacher of the Peasants, Prophet of the New Era!

The Devil likes nothing better than a cock-sure opponent.

That moment, as he entered an unfrequented lane, with his heart beating high with the exaltation of his dangerous mission, with his whole soul uplifted in the thought that he was holding men's destinies in his hands, he saw Rose sitting alone. His heart gave a great leap within him, nevertheless he passed on, pretending not to see her.

Rose grimaced. She sent a slipper after him, hitting him full between the shoulders.

"Is that cousinly?" she cried, in her teasing way. He paused, trembling, yet able to keep his face turned from her.

"Cousin! Cousin! Cousin!" mocked the low voice. He turned. He looked at her, and suddenly a great wave arose within him and engulfed the Great Uprising, the Secret Society, the Rescue, the Gathering at Blackheath—all—all save just one maid and she before him.

The hoarse voices of the men behind, the noises of the Fair, smote upon him, yet nothing seemed real save Rose, sitting there with a splendid, vivid sense of life pulsating through her, the shadow of her long lashes resting on her cheeks.

"Cousin indeed!" he said, with a sob in his voice, "thou knowest well that can never be!"

He clasped both her hands in his.

"I sought to flee thee," he said, with a strange directness.

She smiled and tried to withdraw her hands. But he would not relinquish them and held them fast.

"But I will not flee thee now," he went on. "I have done with struggling. It is useless."

"Nay," he added, with the superb assurance of all lovers to whom eternity is but a passing breath, "I shall never leave thee more."

Rose was not accustomed to analyze her feelings. She acted first and thought afterward—if at all, which was doubtful. But she was puzzled at her conflicting emotions as she sat there thrilling to the passion in his eyes. Her whole body throbbed and trembled in unison with his bounding pulses. She wanted to dismiss him with a scolding for his faithlessness to dear little Matilda. And she wanted to tell him that she was in love with another. Surely all men save the Baron were indifferent to her! Indeed, she had been dreaming of de Leaufort just before this impertinent poor priest had come and disturbed her. She had closed her eyes and felt distinctly the Baron's soft beard brush her cheeks; some faint, elusive perfume that tantalized her memory had entered into her senses; she had sunk into a delicious revery that almost approached a swoon. She was in a dangerously emotional mood. There is an early stage in the love affairs of an emotional woman when she is in love, as has before been said, not as she thinks, with a certain man, but with the powerful emotions which he can arouse. And, it may be added, at such a stage to dream of her lover is not, as she fondly believes, to harden herself against all other comers, but on the contrary it is to break down all the barriers before them. The wise rival is he who knows how to seize upon the psychological moment and urge his suit in no faint-hearted manner. Later on there will come the time when every line of the chosen one's countenance, every trick of manner and speech, have entered into the very warp and woof of her love. Then stand off, it is too late! The image on the sensitive plate of the heart is fixed, no longer is it a vague shadow, easily blurred or superseded!

They said nothing. There was no need of speech. Speech after all is needed only for those poor mortals whose feet rest on the earth. There is an eloquent, tumultuous speech of lovers which is felt, not heard. Their palms beat wildly one into the other, their lips grew dry, they drew long, deep, quivering breaths.

Then, when he kissed her full red lips,—the first time he had kissed a woman's lips,—it came over him that this exquisite creature was no companion for a poor russet priest.

He raised her hand to his lips. "How came you to love a poor priest!" he exclaimed, wondering.

"I love the Bishop in you," she answered, laughing.

"Ah, 'tis a long way from an excommunicated poor priest to a Bishop."

"Nay," she pouted, "I shall have a palace."

He thought her beauty worthy of a king, and told her so.

"Then make me a queen!" she cried impudently. "Yea, a great lady, a great prelate's lady. I can adorn a palace, think you, then a palace, a palace give me!"

He tried to take her in fun: "Ay, a palace, a palace. They grow in the fields—pick me one!"

"Laugh not, I mean a real palace of stone. Look not so dazed. Was not the Archdeaconate of Ely offered you? You shall yet have a Bishopric."

"But that was long ago!"

"Humph! 'long ago,' and will not the Church be gladder than ever to take back the poor priest who can hold so many men from the Uprising?"

What was all this? It was madness. He had given himself to the people, he could never recant.

She kissed his hands.

"These fingers will yet hold a Bishop's staff," she said. Her beauty was maddening. He would not think of the future. He gave himself up to the present. The breath from her lips shook him to the very core of his being. He rained kisses on her passionately—on hair, cheeks, eyes, and lips; and for all that there was a certain fierceness in his caresses, she was unafraid and well content to have it so.

Suddenly a jeering laugh rang through the air:—

"Ha, ha, Sir Russet-priest, so this is the way you follow the call of your dear Master, Jesus Christ! 'Wheresoever my Master calls me,' I think you said to me. Ho, ho, odsooks! did the good Lord graciously call me into so fair a place, I doubt not I should go even as willingly." The two sprang apart and saw the evil face of Hugo Stott leering at them. Rose was frankly frightened and turned again and clung to Annys, whose first impulse was such as any man would feel, to strike the impudent fellow to the ground. But an uncomfortable trick had grown upon him of recalling certain bits of the Gospel at all moments of excitement, and the particular lines that now rang through his brain had in them an appositeness that staid his hand:—

Indeed, it had come. Already he was the laughing-stock of his enemy. He was degraded before the very scum of the earth. He had brought the name of his beloved Lord on the lips of a sneering pardon-seller. He was held up, a self-convicted hypocrite, before the very prince of hypocrites. What could he say for himself? What could he plead? Nothing, save that he was in the grasp of the same terrible power that had brought ruin to hundreds before him. Ah! but stay, he had done wrong, great wrong; he had sinned grievously, yet by some miraculous interposition of the Lord he had been drawn back from the last step that would have cast him into the pit of hell. He had been saved. And by what a hand! Yet, although it had pleased Heaven to send a strange instrument of salvation, nevertheless, he must render due thanks to his deliverer. So, to Stott's utter surprise, instead of felling him to the earth, Annys flung off the girl and extended his hand humbly to him.

"Thanks," he said contritely. "Thou hast snatched me from the jaws of hell."

Stott could scarce believe his eyes, for he was but too ready to believe that Robert Annys was as the usual run of the priests he encountered, ever ready to preach, but not so ready to practise.

In the sudden religious exaltation that swept over him Annys was totally unconscious of his cruelty toward the woman whom he had just clasped in his arms. He could think only of his own wonderful escape. Rose rested on the ground as she had been flung, half reclining, half kneeling, dazed at the sudden change that had come over the ardent lover of a minute before. The uppermost thought in her mind was how handsome he looked in his new-found indignation. His eyes, at other times the pale blue eyes of a dreamer, now scintillated as the dark blue night sky, when the air is crisp and clear and thrilling with the glory of the stars. Deep down within her lay a discontent that all his passion for her had awakened in his eyes no such splendor. She longed to be able to awaken that light in his eyes purely for herself alone; she was fascinated by the peculiar change it wrought in his face; she found a certain pleasure in watching him impersonally, quite as if the object of his indignation were some one else and not herself at all.

As he drew himself up and looked down upon the girl, her beauty seemed to him surely of the Evil One. There rushed over him a horror that he could have succumbed so easily to the temptation that befalls every anchorite. What? was it possible that he, Robert Annys, had been ready but an instant ago to deny his people, to draw them from their most sacred cause, ready to desert the great-hearted leader to whom he had sworn lealty, all for this woman before him? Could one fall lower than this? He had been all too willing to trail the fair robes of the Holy Spouse in the dust to keep this creature by his side. He had listened to her pleadings to make himself a great prelate solely that he might twine golden chains in her locks; he to set yet another example before the people of rapacity and sensuality within the Church, and thereby discourage by so much every honest reformer! God! what wonder that he took it all as a manifestation of the powers of the Evil One? If a mage had appeared unto him and showed him a magnet which drew to it all the trees of the forest, one by one, until they all lay upturned and useless, with great gaping wounds in the earth, where, but a moment before, they had risen proudly, would he not have declared him a sorcerer, and taken him to some holy man to have him purged of his devil? or had him burned publicly at the stake? And what else but some evil sorcery could draw a man from the place where he had been rooted deep down, could sever his heart at a blow from all the things that he held sacred, and could leave him prostrate and useless, a cause of stumbling to the wayfarer?

He had been saved at the eleventh hour by divine interposition. His soul quivered with joy at again being accepted of the Lord. He raised his crucifix high over the crouching figure of the girl, and, after crossing himself on the breast and shoulders, he launched forth the terrible words of exorcism:—

"Satan, enemy of the Faith, enemy of the human race, who brought Death into the world, who has rebelled against all justice, seducer of man, root of all evil, promoter of all vices, come out, come out, I command you, from the body of this woman. Come forth, come forth, I command you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."

At last Rose awoke to the situation. Her amused incredulity of the whole strange scene now gave way to a furious anger that he could dare so to humiliate her. That comes of permitting a priest to make love to you—you never know when the saint will conquer the mere man. And there he stood in such immaculateness, his robes gathered about him, his form drawn up as if there were contamination in her very touch. There he stood, clasping that crucifix as if the Lord on it were his own special protector. Why didn't he go and have done with it? If he was remorseful, so was she; she never wanted to see his sanctimonious face again. And there was that horrid knob-nosed pardoner looking on! How dared he! how dared he! She would reply to him, she would shame him for his cowardice, she would—What she did do was to throw herself face downward on the ground, shedding tears of exasperation and impotent rage. Annys, taking this, very naturally, for a sign of penitence, thought that his exorcism had had effect, and strode off well satisfied, leaving the pardoner to gloat over the beauty of the girl with whom he so strangely and unexpectedly found himself alone. For an instant he watched the departing figure of the young priest with jaw dropped in astonishment. Could it all have been a magnificent piece of acting? No, it was impossible; even to such a cynic as Hugo Stott, it was evident that the man had been thoroughly in earnest. He looked at the girl and his eyes glistened. He tiptoed up to her.

"The devil or no devil, 'tis a delicate morsel. I fear not the devil, nor anything else when 'tis so well disguised."

He would have liked to bury his ugly face in her white neck, but, even as he approached her, she turned suddenly and screamed so loud that instantly a number of men rushed from the fair grounds. They could only swear roundly at the disappearing figure of the pardoner, who had lost no time in making off as quickly as his long gown and clumsy form would permit.

The sight of Rose, pale and trembling, and the obvious inference of what might have happened had they been less prompt, did not tend to make them waste any love on monks and pardoners. Little enough love wasted already!

---