“I know not as to that,” said Carthew. “It is enough if he setteth up his own judgement and denieth essential doctrines.—It were surely ill for any upon whom he might thrust his company—ill, I mean, for them to be seen with him often and in close talk. In common charity any such should be warned. I dare aver he is often straying through the forest or upon this road.”
Alison looked aside. She did not know yet what he would be at, but her every sense was sharpened.
“Have you ever seen,” asked Carthew with careful carelessness—“have you ever chanced to see him and Goodman Heron’s daughter Joan together?”
Alison walked thrice her own length upon the shadowy road before she answered. It took a little time to get it straight. It wasn’t Joan’s soul that he was concerned about—thought one. He was putting her name with that of the leech—had he seen them together, and now was eaten with jealousy? She knew how it felt to be eaten with jealousy—thought two. If he believed that Joan played him false—put him off for another—it could not but help, his thinking that....
“Oh, aye!” said Alison. “I have seen them a dozen times walking and talking together in the forest. But what a sin, sir, if he should teach her heresy!”
CHAPTER XI
THE PLAGUE
Late that winter, after long immunity, black sickness came to the town with the great church and the castle, and cast a long, crooked finger across the river and in the direction of Hawthorn Village. In the streets of the town burned fires of juniper. Waking in the night you might hear the wheels of the death-cart. They stopped before this house, they stopped before that house. The thought trembled and shrank—one night will they stop before this house? In the daytime the bells were tolled.