This was at last agreed on, and John hastened away, by what path I could not see.
"How came he here?" was my first question.
Magdalen hesitated. "If I tell you, Lady, I place his life and that of others in your hands. Yet you are now one of us, having suffered for the faith. You have heard of the Lollards?"
I told her I had, and of Wickliffe, who made an English Bible.
She told me "that ever since his day, there had been many of the faithful, both in England and in Scotland, who preserved their English Bibles and other books, and met in secret and wild places to read and study the same, and to pray and praise together. In the towns," said she, "we do know the faithful by certain private marks placed upon their dwellings; and we meet in inner chambers and cellars. In the country, we betake ourselves to dens and caves of the earth, like the faithful of old, and this is one of our meeting-places."
As she spoke, she displaced a stone in the cavern's side, and showed me a deep and dry recess, in which lay a great book, which she drew out and opened. It was an English Bible, not printed as we have them now, but written with the hand, and well preserved, though the leaves were dark with age, and some of them ready to fall to pieces through much handling.
"Those who could write among us made many copies of parts of these books, which were passed from hand to hand," said she. "But now, of late, we have had printed books from Germany—even the whole New Testament, such as that which your friend gave me."
"And is John Dean then one of your number?" I asked her.
"That is he, and one of the best," she answered me. "There are others scattered through this wild moorland country, and this cavern, where we have found refuge, is one of our meeting-places. Here also do we keep a supply of food and drink for any persecuted ones fleeing as a bird from the fowler, and it was on this business that John Dean came hither this morning."
I told her I trusted the day would come when every household in England should have the pure word of God in hand.