Before they retired to their rest, Cobham stood up and recited the ninety-first Psalm: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." How true and precious did these promises appear to those homeless fugitives! Each took to his own heart such passages as seemed most appropriate to his own particular case; but each found in them the same great comfort--the blessed fact of God's guardianship over those he loves, and their absolute and eternal safety, however earthly cares may oppress, dangers threaten, or sorrows impend. The soldier, Cobham, realized in the God whom he had learned to worship untrammeled by priestcraft and juggling tricks, a shield and buckler far stronger than he had ever borne in the wars under king Harry. The gray-haired knight, who had that day seen the home where his ancestors had lived and died, the birth-place of himself and his two sons, the inheritance which he had thought to leave to a long line of posterity, razed to the very ground by his enemies, and who now felt that he had no home in the wide world in which to shelter his gray hairs, crept up, as it were, to the promise, "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, in him will I trust," and with child-like faith, taking his Heavenly Father at his word, cast away his sorrows and cares.
Bertrand, the peasant, who had abandoned the old faith and followed his feudal lord into the new, but who had never imbibed the spirituality of the reform; who had cast aside the bondage of Rome, but who had not yet bowed his head to the yoke of the gentle Jesus; felt that night as he had never done before, and his aroused feelings were never quieted until he came, with no priestly mediator between, to the feet of his Saviour, and found peace in believing.
Nor was the impression lessened when Sir John poured forth a simple, earnest prayer to their great Protector. There was no word of complaint in it, still less of anger toward their persecutors. He besought, with earnest pleadings, that as they were now Sauls in persecuting, they might become Pauls in defending the faith. And when the thought of his ruined home and desolate possessions came across his mind, he prayed that those mansions might be bestowed upon his enemies as well as himself, which are not made with hands, and whose treasures no moth nor rust can corrupt, no foe break through and steal.
Then they laid them down and slept, calmly and peacefully, for so did they realize God's presence, that the rough stone walls seemed to them like the fingers of his almighty hand, stretched around them to guard them from their foes.
CHAPTER XI.
The Lesson of Forgiveness.
When Charles Bertrand--for he it was who was their stranger guest--had further narrated how, the next day, the two Lollards had easily passed over the few miles that lay between their night's resting-place and Cobham's mountain retreat in that wild country which gave asylum to outlaws of every kind, he told them that Sir John still had his habitation in Wales, but frequently ventured down into the valleys of his own land, traversing several counties under various disguises, to attend and encourage meetings of the Reformers. Patiently they were all waiting for the time when, bursting over the land as the sunbeams after a thunder-cloud has passed, Bible truth, liberty, and toleration should make themselves to be known and acknowledged by the world. Patiently and trustingly they waited, for they had no doubt of the fulfillment of their Master's promises; but, alas! it pleased that Master, whose will must be unquestioned by human intellect, long, very long to delay the deliverance which was yet surely to come. The child that was then at its mother's breast grew up to boyhood, manhood, descended to old age, and then returned to his native dust, long ere that day came which those fond, simple hearts believed to be even then at the dawn. The nation was not yet sufficiently purged, men's faith not sufficiently tried; that precious "seed of the church," the blood of holy martyrs, had not yet finished dropping into the earth, nor had it yet been sufficiently watered by widows' and orphans' tears for the precious harvest to spring up, which now is yielding to every soul speaking the English tongue, the priceless boon of perfect liberty of conscience toward man, and toward God.
Bertrand was glad to stretch his limbs by the hut fire after his journey; and after the simple worship, which always closed the day's labor of these people, all betook themselves to rest.
All but one. Geoffrey could not sleep; so he arose softly, and, wrapping himself in his cloak, bounded up the cliffs by a path so narrow and rocky, and close to the brink of the precipice, that only so firm and steady a foot as his own would care to tread it by night. As he passed out of the shadow of the cottage, a man lifted up his head from behind some bushes, and shook himself as though wearied of a confined posture. Still, he did not stand boldly upright, but crouched again, keeping in the shade, and then throwing a look of malignant hatred at the little hut and its quiet sleepers, he muttered an oath of satisfaction, and crept stealthily upon the boy's track.
Meanwhile, what were the thoughts of the young Lollard?