Chris still looked at him with parted lips. This praise was sweet, after the bitterness of his failure with Ralph. The priest seemed to know what was passing in his mind. “Oh! you will fail sometimes,” he said, “but not finally. You are a monk, my son, and a man.” * * * * * Lady Torridon retired into her impregnable silence again after her sallies of speech on the previous evening; but as the few days went on that Chris had been allowed to spend with his parents he was none the less aware that her attitude towards him was one of contempt. She showed it in a hundred ways--by not appearing to see him, by refusing to modify her habits in the smallest particular for his convenience, by a rigid silence on the subject that was in the hearts of both him and his father. She performed her duties as punctually and efficiently as ever, dealt dispassionately and justly with an old servant who had been troublesome, and with regard to whom her husband was both afraid and tender; but never asked for confidences or manifested the minutest detail of her own accord. * * * * * On the fourth day after Chris’s arrival news came that Sir Thomas More had been condemned, but it roused no more excitement than the fall of a threatening rod. It had been known to be inevitable. And then on Chris’s last evening at home came the last details. * * * * * Sir James and Chris had been out for a long ride up the estate, talking but little, for each knew what was in the heart of the other; and they were just dismounting at the terrace-steps when there was a sound of furious galloping; and a couple of riders burst through the gateway a hundred yards away. Chris felt his heart leap and hammer in his throat, but stood passively awaiting what he knew was coming; and a few seconds later, Nicholas Maxwell checked his horse passionately at the steps. “God damn them!” he cried, with a crimson quivering face. Sir James stepped up at once and took him by the arm. “Nick,” he said, and glanced at the staring grooms. Nicholas showed his teeth like a dog. “God damn them!” he said again. The other rider had come up by now; he was dusty and seemed spent. He was a stranger to the father and son who waited on the steps; but he looked like a groom, and slipped off his horse deftly and took Sir Nicholas’s bridle. “Come in Nick,” said Sir James. “We can talk in the house.” As the three went up together, with the strange rider at a respectful distance behind, Nicholas broke out again in one sentence. “They have done it,” he said, “he is dead. Mother of God!” His whip twitched in his clenching hand. He turned and jerked his head beckoningly to the man who followed; and the four went on together, through the hall and into Sir James’s parlour. Sir James shut the door. “Tell us, Nick.” Nicholas stood at the hearth, glaring and shifting. “This fellow knows--he saw it; tell them, Dick.”