"Ah! Father, if you had been a prisoner all these weary months, you would not ask that question." "Then, my son, all thou hast to do is to kneel down here at my knee and confess thy sins, and then thou shalt go free out into the sunshine; for I think thou hast borne penance enough for all the wrong thou canst have committed, poor child!" Geoffrey turned with an angry answer on his lips, but Hubert’s quiet voice was already replying: "I shrive me to God morning and evening, and Christ hath long since borne my penance. He only stands betwixt my God and me." "How!" said Father Paul, amazed at finding such opposition at the very outset. "So young, and a heretic already! Dost thou set thyself against the holy mother church and all her teachings?" "By all the saints ye worship, sir priest!" Geoffrey burst out, no longer able to restrain himself, "your holy mother church hath showed herself but a sorry jade of a step-mother to us. What obedience do we owe to one who has robbed us of our home and our friends, and who thirsts for our blood? You had better choose another place to preach the papistrie in than this foul dungeon!" "Boy!" said the monk sternly, "I came to bring you a message of peace, but you will make me turn it to one of wrath and justice. If you are old enough thus to brave authority, you are old enough for the rack to force from you more seemly speech." Geoffrey was cooler now, but none the less determined. He stood before his visitor with such resolution in his hollow eyes, and stern contempt in the rigid lines about his mouth, that the monk involuntarily stepped back a space. He spoke in a low, deep tone: "Look you, sir priest, ye and your fellows have razed to the ground the home of my ancestors; ye have made my father a penniless exile; ye have slain with fire and sword our dearest friends; ye seized us when we were living quietly and peaceably, not even seeking to teach to others these doctrines which you call heresy; ye have shut us up here in this noisome place, having done no wrong, and having never even had a trial; ye have taken away from us the light and air of heaven, and I wot well ye think never to let us forth again. So be it. Hunger and thirst and weariness will soon open for us gates which ye cannot shut, and give to us a home which ye can neither destroy nor ever inhabit." The boy’s highly-wrought feelings had proved too much for his feeble frame, for though his voice rang clear and high to the end, he sank down the moment he had finished and burst into a violent fit of sobbing. Hubert, excited by the interview, had become flushed with fever, and he seemed to have partly lost consciousness of the subject of discourse; but, catching the last words, he began in a weak and wandering way to talk: "Home? Oh! yes, I think it is time we went home, Geoffrey; they want us home, and it is warm and bright and beautiful there. Take hold of my hand, brother, and let us go home together!"