As the dance went on, the old beggar revived from his warmth, and fixed his eyes upon Abdil Foley, and somehow contrived to let him see that he claimed his attention. He thought he was unobserved, but the watchful fool had kept him in his eye, and now felt convinced that there was more than one demon in the room. Abdil contrived gradually to draw up to the fire-place, and the beggar dropped his staff. 'Pick it up, young man,' said he; and as he gave it him he said-- 'Father Duncan is here.' The guilty Abdil looked at the beggar narrowly, and saw in a moment, beneath the disguise, the ever watchful priest of St. John the Baptist, Father Confessor to Alice De Clinton, and the craftiest Jesuit who ever set foot into the diocese of Norwich. 'Go and join in the dance, Abdil; shake off thy melancholy; I will set thee free.' Abdil went; he suddenly shook off his melancholy--for he was bid to do so, and by a priest--so that he became, if not in reality, yet apparently, an altered man. The fool observed it, and kept his watch the more closely upon him, as his altered behaviour seemed to him entirely owing to the beggar's speech. Lord De Freston, in his attentions to his people, had for a time forgotten the attack upon the beggar by his bloodhound, and now, seeing the old man interested in the dance, he walked towards his seat, and entered into conversation with him. 'I hope thou hast recovered from the terror which my savage hound occasioned.' 'Thanks to thee, I feel myself better. He is a faithful dog.' 'He is, indeed; and singular in him, he never attempts to attack any one who is not a stranger--quite a stranger to this country. He has never smelt thy foot before.' 'I am a stranger from Lancashire, and poor enough; but I have a vow upon me to visit Latimer's Tower on the Christmas Day after Cardinal Wolsey's death.' 'Ha! how knewest thou that the Tower was ever Latimer's Tower.' 'That is easily explained. Though I am a beggar, a pilgrim, a wanderer from a far country, yet I was a monk at York, who had to do penance for my sin, and the penance laid upon me was that, from the moment that the death of Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York, should take place, be it whensoever it might, or I be wheresoever I might be, I should start barefoot for the birth-place of Wolsey, and there remain until Christmas Day next succeeding, and that upon that day I should visit a certain tower, designated, by the Cardinal himself, Latimer's Tower, and affix in the window of the fifth story this illuminated cross. 'That I was to ask permission of thyself so to do the one hour before midnight. I have scarcely had time to walk the distance, as you see me, noble lord; but humbly crave it, as the completion of my vow, to perform the task.'