"'This, then, is the news I have to send you--sorrowful, indeed, yet
joyful, too; for surely we may think that they who bore such pains for
Christ's sake with such constancy will intercede for us whom they leave
behind. I am hoping myself to come North again before I go to Douay next
year, and will see you then and tell you more.'"
The priest laid down the paper, trembling.
Mr. FitzHerbert looked up.
"It will give pleasure to the company," he said, "to know that the
writer of the letter is Mr. Ludlam, from Radbourne, in this county. As
you have heard, he, too, hopes by God's mercy to be made priest and to
come back to England."
CHAPTER VIII
I
In the following week Robin went home again.
The clear weather of Easter had broken, and racing clouds, thick as a
pall, sped across the sky that had been so blue and so cheerful; a wind
screamed all day, now high, now low, shattering the tender flowers of
spring, ruffling the Derwent against its current, by which he rode, and
dashing spatters of rain now and again on his back, tossing high and
wide the branches under which he went, until the woods themselves became
as a great melancholy organ, making sad music about him.
When a mind is fluent and uncertain there is no describing it. He
thought he had come to a decision last week; he found that the decision
was shattered as soon as made. He had talked to the priest; he had
resisted Marjorie; and yet to neither of them had he put into formal
words what it was that troubled him.
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