“What has he done?” asked Lysbeth in a low voice, and bending down her head to hide the working of her features.
“Done? My dear lady, it is almost too dreadful to tell you. This misguided and unfortunate young man, with another person whom the witnesses have not been able to identify, was seen at midnight reading the Bible.”
“The Bible! Why should that be wrong?”
“Hush! Are you also a heretic? Do you not know that all this heresy springs from the reading of the Bible? You see, the Bible is a very strange book. It seems that there are many things in it which, when read by an ordinary layman, appear to mean this or that. When read by a consecrated priest, however, they mean something quite different. In the same way, there are many doctrines which the layman cannot find in the Bible that to the consecrated eye are plain as the sun and the moon. The difference between heresy and orthodoxy is, in short, the difference between what can actually be found in the letter of this remarkable work, and what is really there—according to their holinesses.”
“Almost thou persuadest me——” began Lysbeth bitterly.
“Hush! lady—to be, what you are, an angel.”
There came a pause.
“What will happen to him?” asked Lysbeth.
“After—after the usual painful preliminaries to discover accomplices, I presume the stake, but possibly, as he has the freedom of Leyden, he might get off with hanging.”
“Is there no escape?”