"My errors, as you call them, shall be confessed with my latest breath, if God gives me grace to hold fast to Him," returned Jack. "You would not have known them, had it not been for my earnest desire to comfort you in your trouble. Nor do I regret having spoken them, though by so doing I have put a weapon in your hands to slay me withal. It seemed to me that I must speak, whatever came of it. The Gospel says, 'Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed when he shall come in the glory of his father and of the holy angels.' And again, 'If we deny him, he also will deny us.' Dear Anne, only listen to the Word and to the Spirit, only take up the cross and follow the Lord, and all will be well." Anne compressed her lips and made no reply, and her father coming in at that moment, she escaped to her own room. "Is all ready?" asked Jack. "Then give me your blessing, dear father, and I will set out." "Thou hast it, thou hast it, my son," said Master Lucas, laying his hand on his son's head as he bent his knee before him. "May our Lord and the saints prosper thy journey and bring thee safe home again!" Jack's mind was at first hardly in a state to enjoy his ride. He had a sharp battle with himself before he could subdue the anger and wounded pride which stirred within him; and his conscience told him that he had not been without blame. He had spoken harshly and scornfully to his sister, and made an ungenerous use of the secret she had confided to him. Anne was deeply angered at him, that was plain; and he had, by offending her, lessened his chance of influencing her for good. He had another cause of disturbance. It seemed to him that much as he had thought on the subject, he had never realized before, the trouble he was likely to bring on his friends, especially on his father, by accepting the new doctrines, as they were called. He said to himself, as he rode along, that he might be taken up and thrown into jail any day, and that there would be probably no release from prison for him, save by the ignominious death of the stake, or the still more shameful and fatal way of recantation. He pictured to himself the stake and chain, the crowd of scornful gazers and the blazing torch, or the scaffold set up in the market-place where the apostate must stand bearing his fagot while a monk preached from the pulpit over his head. "It would kill my father in either case," said he to himself. "He would never recover the grief and the disgrace. And if it should prove a delusion after all! If Anne should be right and Master Fleming and the others wrong!" It was a fearful combat that Jack fought out with the Tempter that sunny autumn day, as he rode over the heath and along the still green hedgerows. The travellers he met saw in him some youth going out on a holiday excursion, and marvelled at his sombre face and compressed lip.