All honour to Sir Everard Digby for having been the human medium of bringing about this most happy and blessed conversion! It might have been difficult to accomplish it by any other method. In those days of persecution, stratagem was absolutely necessary to Catholics for their safety sake, even in everyday life, and still more so in evangelism. As to the particular stratagem used by Digby in this instance, I do not go so far as to say that it was blame-worthy; I have often read of it without mentally criticising it; I have even regarded it with some degree of admiration; but, now that I am attempting a study of Sir Everard Digby's character, and seeking for symptoms of it in every detail that I can discover of his words and actions, I ask myself whether, in all its innocence, his conduct on this occasion did not exhibit traces of a natural inclination to plot and intrigue. Could he have induced Manners to come to his rooms by no other attraction than a game of cards, which he had no intention of playing? Was it necessary on his arrival there to ask him to await that of guests who were not coming, and had never been invited? Was he obliged, in the presence of so intimate a friend, to pretend to be only well-disposed towards Catholics instead of owning himself to be one of them? Need he have put himself to the trouble of apologising to Father Gerard for revealing that he was a Catholic? In religious, as in all other matters, there are cases in which artifice may be harmless or desirable, or even a duty, but a thoroughly straightforward man will shrink from the "pious dodge" as much as the kind-hearted surgeon will shrink from the use of the knife or the cautery. Necessary as they may have been, nay, necessary as they undoubtedly were, the planning, and disguising, and hiding, and intriguing used as means for bringing about the conversions of Lady Digby, Sir Everard Digby, and Oliver Manners, though innocent in themselves, placed those concerned in them in that atmosphere of romance, adventure, excitement, and even sentiment, which I have before described, and it is obvious that such an atmosphere is not without its peculiar perils. It is certainly very comfortable to be able to preach undisturbed, to convert heretics openly, and to worship in the churches of the King and the Government; yet even in religion, to some slight degree, the words of a certain very wise man may occasionally be true, that[56] "stolen waters are sweeter, and hidden bread is more pleasant." Nothing is more excellent than missionary work; but it is a fact that proselytism, when conducted under difficulties and dangers, whether it be under the standard of truth or under the standard of error, is not without some of the elements of sport; at any rate, if it be true, as enthusiasts have been heard to assert, that even the hunted fox is a partaker in the pleasures of the chase, the Jesuits had every opportunity of enjoying them during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.