"Tell Father Brisdone I commend thee to his charge, my child, and bid him from me take thee away from thy father's care sooner than let thee become the wife of this man. Tell him, too, that I am puzzled about this seizure of my person. I know not what it means, unless it be for consorting with him." "I know, Master Peasegood," said Mace, pressing his great hand. "You have an enemy who has done this thing." "Ay, child, and who may that be?" "The man who asked a service of thee, which thou did'st refuse." "Sir Mark? Yes, thou art right. Good-bye, my child, good-bye." Mace's heart sank as she saw the stout figure of her old friend go towards where a great lumbering, open vehicle was standing, and as it disappeared she felt that she had one friend the less. It was, then, with a mute feeling of despair that she turned down the narrow, winding lane to meet a little further on three men, who, at a short distance, seemed to be the same she had so lately seen depart. On a nearer approach, however, she found that it was their uniform, or livery, only that was the same. They looked at her curiously as they passed, and then a shiver ran through her as the thought struck home,--what was their object there? "Father Brisdone!" she ejaculated. "They have been after him." A cold feeling of despair crept over her as she read in all this the power of the man who sought to make her his wife. He was evidently at work insidiously removing her friends, to replace them with people of his own, and more than ever she felt how helpless her position had become. With her heart beating a slow, heavy, despairing throb, she passed on a rising piece of ground to gaze through the trees at a portion of the Pool which lay gleaming in the sunshine; when her brow contracted strangely, and her eyes half closed, as sinister thoughts, like those of some temptation, came upon her. She was to be alone and friendless if Father Brisdone was taken away: her father had literally sold her to this man, and sooner than he should take her in his arms and call her wife she felt that she would seek for rest in the great Pool. "Pst! pst!" Mace turned sharply, and, gazing in the direction from which the sound had come, she saw high up amidst the bushes on the bank the rusty cassock of him who had so lately been in her thoughts. "Dear father!" she cried. "You there?" "Hist, child, hist! Don't look in my direction, but stoop, pick flowers, and talk to me as you bend down." "Why are you there, father?" she said softly, as she obeyed his words. "It is the old story, child. I am one of a proscribed set of men now, and I have had warning from Tom Croftly that there are those here who seek to make me a prisoner." "Yes, father, I have seen them." "Then I must take to hiding, child. When Gilbert Carr's ship returns he will give me safe passage to France. Till then I shall make my home in the iron-pits--the disused ones in the old beechwood."