Mr Roberts sighed heavily as he laid down the key. "Well, I did hope to keep me out of this mess. I had thought, by outward conforming, and divers rich gifts to the priest, and so forth-- 'Tis hard a man cannot be at peace in his own house." "'Tis far harder when he is not at peace in his own soul." "Ah!" The tone of the exclamation said that was quite too good to expect, at any rate for the speaker. Mrs Collenwood laid her hand on her brother's shoulder. "Tom, we are parting for a long season--it may be for all time. Suffer me speak one word with thee, for the sake of our loving mother, and for her saintly sake that sleepeth in All Saints' churchyard, whose head lay on my bosom when her spirit passed to God. There will come a day, good brother, when thou shalt stand before an higher tribunal than that of my Lord Cardinal, to hear a sentence whence there shall be none appeal. What wouldst thou in that day that thou hadst done in this? As thou wilt wish thou hadst done then, do now." "I--can't," faltered the unhappy waverer. "I would as lief be scalded and have done with it, Tom, as live in such endless terror of hot water coming nigh me. Depend on it, it should be the lesser suffering in the end." "There's Gertrude," he suggested in the same tone. "Leave Gertrude be. They'll not touch her. Gertrude shall be of that religion which is the fashion, to the end of her days--without the Lord turn her--and folks of that mettle need fear no persecution. Nay, Tom, 'tis not Gertrude that holdeth thee back from coming out on the Lord's side. God's side is ever the safest in the end. It is thine own weak heart and weak faith, wherein thou restest, and wilt not seek the strength that can do all things, which God is ready to grant thee but for the asking." "You are a good woman, Frances," answered her brother, with more feeling than he usually showed, "and I would I were more like you." "Tarry not there, Tom: go on to `I would I were more like Christ.' There be wishes that fulfil themselves; and aspirations after God be of that nature. And now, dear brother, I commend thee to God, and to the word of His grace. Be thou strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might!" They kissed each other for the last time, and Mrs Collenwood stood listening to the slow, heavy step which passed up the stairs and into the bedroom overhead. When Mr Roberts had shut and barred his door, she took up the key, and with a sigh which had reference rather to his future than to her present, went to seek Pandora. Their little packages of immediate necessaries were soon made up. When the clock struck midnight--an hour at which in 1557 everybody was in bed--two well cloaked and hooded women crept out of the low-silled window of the dinning-room, and made their silent and solitary way through the shrubs of the pleasure-ground to the little wicket-gate which opened on the Goudhurst road. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. POTS AND PANS.