But several humble persons were raking amid the ashes where the books had been burnt, as though to see whether some poor fragments might not have been left unconsumed; and when they failed to find even this--for others had been before them, and the task of burning had probably been well accomplished--they would put a handful of ashes into some small receptacle, and slip it cautiously into pocket or pouch.
One man, seeing Dalaber's gaze fixed upon him, went up to him almost defiantly and said: "Are you spying upon us poor citizens, to whom is denied aught but the ashes of the bread of life ?" Dalaber looked him full in the face, and spoke the words he had heard from Clarke's lips the previous evening: "Crede et manducasti." Instantly the man's face changed.

A light sprang into his eyes.

He looked round him cautiously, and said in a whisper: "You are one of us!" There was scarce a moment's pause before Dalaber replied: "I am one of you--in heart and purpose, at least, if not in actual fact." He paced home through the streets in a tempest of conflicting emotions.

But his mind was made up.

Come what might--peril, suffering, or death--he had put his hand to the plough.