While the friar was speaking I gradually recovered.
“We will now set forward,” he said, “for I must leave this City, and continue my search for my friend, who has, I believe, returned to England. I did not say this to you before, but I do so now I know that I may trust you. Should you by chance meet him, let him know that he who was once Friar Roger is so no longer, and earnestly desires to see him.”
I assured him that I should be ready to help him, as well as Master Overton, and that I believed nothing would induce me to betray them.
“Yes, I know that I can trust you,” he said. “And now I have to ask you, did not the lady give you a packet, desiring you to carry out the wishes which are therein expressed?”
“Yes,” I answered, feeling in the bosom of my frock, in which I placed it. “I have it here safe, and hope to do as she desired.”
“It might, however, be better if you were to give it to me,” he observed. “You are but a youth, and might lose it, or may be unable to fulfil her request.”
I could not help looking at the speaker suspiciously as he said this. Was his object to deprive me of the packet, that he might make use of it for his own purposes? If such was the case, he might have done so while I lay in a swoon.
“You will pardon me, my friend,” I answered, after a minute’s consideration; “that poor lady confided the packet to me, almost with her dying breath, and I purpose, if I have the power, to carry out her wishes.”
Friar Roger looked at me and smiled.
“You act wisely,” he answered. “You have not yet proved my fidelity, and are right not to trust me; and, besides, I think you have a greater prospect of remaining in this life than I have, for assuredly if my heresy were discovered I should speedily be brought into the same state as the poor people you saw this morning.”