‘Sir, I owe you the plain story; and here it is. In the darkness before dawn this morning a hoy, standing off from the coast, was driven ashore at Teignmouth by the fury of the wind and waves. Something, I know not what, aroused in the rough folk who helped to beach her a belief that there were Catholic emissaries from Picardy on board, and in a moment the devil was ablaze in them. For some most unjustifiable reason their suspicions fell on me, of whom their fanatic hatred would have made an instant victim, casting me into a fire of driftwood they prepared to build upon the shore, had I not through God’s grace and the darkness succeeded in escaping from their cruel hands. Battered and wounded, I fled at random, their shouts and imprecations following me as I ran. By dawn I had gained the heights, whence, hiding and observing, I could see the chase, now gathered in volume, still furious on my tracks. Had they once scattered, I had been lost, but they kept together, while I scurried on before, taking advantage of every scrap of cover. Still they pressed on, like hounds intent and inexorable, and to me, hurt and exhausted as I was, there could have come but one end, had I not, through merciful Providence, chanced, when near my last gasp, on a charitable stranger. That is all my tale.’ Brion, regarding the speaker enigmatically, did not respond for a moment. ‘So,’ said he at last, ‘you came in the boat?’ ‘That is perfectly true.’ ‘And from Picardy--where there are Jesuits?’ ‘And traders.’ ‘True; and pardoners among them, mayhap--vendors of spurious relics to the credulous, pigs’ bones for saints,’ a feather of the cock that crew St Peter into shame, and of other things no less false and profitable--Papal indulgences, to wit, for any that would be traitors to their country.’ ‘It is not true.’ ‘Why, I know you for a Papist, else would you ne’er have spoke of “Catholic” emissaries.’ ‘I deny it not. Denounce me for it, an you will. Wounded and in your power, I shall not abjure my faith.’ ‘Your necessity, as you should know, is your surest appeal to mine.’ ‘Yet you can show so little Christian tolerance as to assume, without proof, a certain vileness in me, and for no reason but just that I am a Catholic. Tell me this, Sir: is Papistry, as you call it, countenanced in your England?’ ‘With reason, no.’ ‘We’ll spare the reason. It is not countenanced, at least. Then, for the convinced English Catholic there is no alternative to apostacy but--Picardy, shall we say?’ ‘God forbid I should quarrel with any man for his religion. Only for yours, Picardy is a wholesomer climate than Devon.’ ‘My hurts cry Amen to that.’ ‘Why not have remained there, then?’