But before I could drive in the spurs, a hand fell on the bridle, and the monk's face appeared at my knee. "Well?" I said, glaring down at him--I was burning to be away. "That is a good cloak you have got there," he muttered hurriedly. "There, strapped to the saddle, you fool. You do not want that, give it me. Do you hear? Quick, give it me," he cried, raising his voice and clutching at it fiercely, his face dark with greed and fear. "I see," I replied, as I unstrapped it. "I am to steal the horse that you may get the cloak. And then you will lay the lot on my shoulders. Well, take it!" I cried, "and go your way as fast as you can." Throwing it at him as hard as I could, I shook up the reins and went off down the road at a gallop. The wind whistled pleasantly past my ears. The sounds of the town grew faint and distant. Each bound of the good hack carried me farther and farther from present danger, farther and farther from the old life. In the exhilaration and excitement of the moment I forgot my condition; forgot that I had not a penny-piece in my pocket, and that I had left an unpaid bill behind me; forgot even that I rode a--well, a borrowed horse. CHAPTER IV. TWO SISTERS OF MERCY. A younger generation has often posed me finely by asking, "What, Sir Francis! Did you not see _one_ bishop burned? Did you not know _one_ of the martyrs? Did you _never_ come face to face with Queen Mary?" To all which questions I have one answer, No, and I watch small eyes grow large with astonishment. But the truth is, a man can only be at one place at a time. And though, in this very month of February, 1555, Prebendary Rogers--a good, kindly man, as I have heard, who had a wife and nine children--was burned in Smithfield in London for religion, and the Bishop of Gloucester suffered in his own city, and other inoffensive men were burned to death, and there was much talk of these things, and in thousands of breasts a smoldering fire was kindled which blazed high enough by and by--why, I was at Coton End, or on the London Road, at the time, and learned such things only dimly and by hearsay.