"I have led but a hermit's life, as I have told you. I have been bred up in the faith of my forefathers, and that faith I believe. What perplexes me is that those who hold the Established or Reformed faith, as men term it, have the same creeds, the same doctrines as we ourselves. I have from time to time conformed to the law, and gone to the services, and I have not heard aught spoken within their walls that our good priest in old days used not to tell me was sound doctrine. There be things he taught me that these men say naught about; but no man may in one discourse touch upon every point of doctrine. I freely own that I have been sorely perplexed to know whence comes all this strife, all these heart burnings."
"Thou wilt know and understand full soon, when once thou hast seen the life of the great city and the strife of faction there," answered his companion, lapsing into the familiar "thou" as he spoke with increased earnestness. "In thy hermit's life thou hast had no knowledge of the robbery, the desecration, the pollution which our Holy Mother Church has undergone from these pestilent heretics, who have thought to denude her of her beauty and her glory, whilst striving to retain such things as jump with their crabbed humours, and may be pared down to please their poisoned and vicious minds. Ah! it makes the blood boil in the veins of the true sons of the Church, as thou wilt find, my youthful friend, when thou gettest amongst them. But it will not always last. The day of reckoning will come--nay, is already coming when men shall find that the Blessed and Holy Church may not be defiled and downtrodden with impunity for ever. Ah yes! the day will come--it is even at the door--when God shall arise and his enemies be scattered. Scattered--scattered! verily that is the word. And the sons of the true faith throughout the length and breadth of the land shall arise and rejoice, and the heretics shall stand amazed and confounded!"
As he spoke these words his figure seemed to expand, and he raised his right hand to heaven with a peculiar gesture of mingled menace and appeal. Cuthbert was silent and amazed. He did not understand in the least the tenor of these wild words, but he was awed and impressed, and felt at once that the strife and stress of the great world into which he was faring was something very different from anything he had conceived of before.
By this time the travellers had reached the dreary waste called by the inhabitants Hammerton Heath. At some seasons of the year it was golden with gorse or purple with ling, but in this drear winter season it was bare and colourless, and utterly desolate. The outline of dark forests could be seen all around on the horizon; but the road led over the exposed ground, where not a tree broke the monotony of the way. Cuthbert was glad enough to have a companion to ride by his side over the lonely waste, which looked its loneliest in the cold radiance of the moon. He did not reply to the strange words he had just heard, and his companion, after a brief pause, resumed his discourse in a different tone, telling the lad more about London and the life there than ever he had heard in his life before. But the moral of his discourse was always the sufferings, the wrongs, the troubles of the Roman Catholics, who had looked for better times under Mary Stuart's son; and gradually raising within the breast of the youth a feeling of warm sympathy with those of his own faith, and a distrust and abhorrence of the laws that made life well nigh impossible for the true sons of the Church.
"Ruined in estate, too often injured in body, hated, despised, hunted to death like beasts of the earth, what is left for us but some great struggle after our lives and liberties?" concluded the speaker, in his half melancholy, half ardent way. "Verily, when things be so bad that they cannot well be worse, then truly men begin to think that the hour of action is at hand. Be the night never so long, the dawn comes at last. And so will our day dawn for us--though it may dawn in clouds of smoke and vapour, and with a terrible sound of destruction."
But these last words were hardly heard by Cuthbert, whose attention had been attracted by the regular beat of horse hoofs upon the road behind. Although the track was but a sandy path full of ruts and holes, the sound travelled clearly through the still night air. Whoever these new travellers were, they were coming along at a brisk pace, and Cuthbert drew rein to look behind him.
"There be horsemen coming this way!" he said.
"Ay, verily there be; and moreover I mislike their looks. Honest folks do not gallop over these bad roads in yon headlong fashion. I doubt not they be robbers, eager to overtake and despoil us. We must make shift to press on at the top of our speed. This is an ill place to be overtaken. We have no chance against such numbers. Luckily our steeds are not way worn; they have but jogged comfortably along these many miles. Push your beast to a gallop, my lad; there is no time to lose."
Cuthbert essayed to do this; but honest old Dobbin had no notion of a pace faster than a leisurely amble. Most of his work had been done in the plough, and he had no liking for the rapid gallop demanded by his rider.
The lad soon saw how it stood with him, and called out to his well-mounted companion not to tarry for him, but to leave him to chance and kind fortune.