I looked up to the person who put this question to me, and gave a sudden cry, I know not whether of terror or joy; for great as was the change which the lapse of years, and great inward and outward changes, had wrought in his aspect, I saw it was my father. "I am Constance," I cried; "Constance Sherwood! Oh, my dear father!" and then fell at his feet weeping. After an instant's, astonishment and fixed gazing on my face, he recognized me, who was, I doubt not, more changed than himself, and received me with a great paternal kindness and the tenderest greeting imaginable, yet tempered with reserve and so much of restraint as should befit one who, for Christ's sake, had dissevered himself from the joys, albeit not from the affections, of the natural heart. "Oh, my good child, my own dear Constance," he said; "hath God in his bounty given thy poor father a miraculous sight of thee before his death, or art thou come verily in flesh and blood to warn him of his danger?" "My dear and honored father," I replied, "time presses; peril is indeed at hand, if you and Mr. Tunstall are the same person." "The wounds in my hands," he answered, "must prove me such, albeit now healed by the care of that good Samaritan, Lady l'Estrange. But prithee, my good child, whence comest thou?" "Alas!" I said; "and yet not alas, if God should be so good to me as by my means to save you, I am Sir Hammond's guest, being a friend of his lady's. I came there yesterday." "Oh, my good child, I thought not to have seen thee in these thy grown-up years. Master Rugeley," he added, turning to his host, "this is the little girl I forsook four years ago, for to obtain the hundredfold our Lord doth promise." "My very dear father," I said, "joy is swallowed up in fear. God help me, I came to warn a stranger (if so be any priest in these times should be a stranger to a Catholic), and I find you." "Oh, but I am mightfully pleased," quoth he, "to see thee, my child, even in this wise, and to hear thee speak like a true daughter of Holy Church. And Lady l'Estrange is then thy friend?" "Yea, my dear father; but for God and our lady's sake hide yourself. I warrant yon the constables may soon be here. Master Rugeley, where can he be concealed, or whither fly, and I with him?" "Nay, prithee not so fast," quoth he. "Flight would be useless; and in the matter of hiding, one should be more easily concealed than two; beside that, the hollow of a tree, which Master Rugeley will, I ween, appoint me for a bed-chamber to-night, should hardly lodge us both with comfort." "Oh, sir," said Rugeley, "do not tarry." "For thy sake, no; not for more than one minute, Thomas; but ere I part from this wench, two questions I must needs ask her."