Alas, for the poor Abbe! they had not remained there more than twenty minutes when he was seen approaching them, reading his breviary as he came along.

They did not move, however, nor seem to notice him, until he had got into the midst of them, when they formed a circle round him, and the loud voice of Whitecraft commanded him to stand.

The poor old priest closed his breviary, and looked around him; but he felt no alarm, because he was conscious of no offence, and imagined himself safe under the protection of a distinguished Protestant nobleman.
"Gentlemen," said he, calmly and meekly, but without fear, "what is the cause of this conduct towards an inoffensive old man?
It is true I am a Catholic priest, but I am under the protection of the Marquis of------.
He is a Protestant nobleman, and I am sure the very mention of his name will satisfy you, that I cannot be the object either of your suspicion or your enmity." "But, my dear sir," replied Sir Robert, "the nobleman you mention is a suspected man himself, and I have reported him as such to the Government.

He is married to a Popish wife, and you are a seminary priest and harbored by her and her husband." "But what is your object in stopping and surrounding me," asked the priest, "as if I were some public delinquent who had violated the laws?
Allow me, sir, to pass, and prevent me at your peril; and permit me, before I proceed, to ask your name ?" and the old man's eyes flashed with an indignant sense of the treatment he was receiving.
"Did you ever hear of Sir Robert Whitecraft ?" "The priest-hunter, the persecutor, the robber, the murderer?
I did, with disgust, with horror, with execration.

If you are he, I say to you that I am, as you see, an old man, and a priest, and have but one life; take it, you will anticipate my death only by a short period; but I look by the light of an innocent conscience into the future, and I now tell you that a woful and a terrible retribution is hanging over your head." "In the meantime," said Sir Robert, very calmly, as he dismounted from his horse, which he desired one of the men to hold.