"Your blessing, sir," he said to the priest. And Anthony eyed him with
astonishment.


III

Robin was moved, as he rode home over the high moors, and down at last
upon the woods of Matstead, in a manner that was new to him, and that he
could not altogether understand. He had met travelling priests before;
indeed, all the priests whose masses he had ever heard, or from whom he
had received the sacraments, were travelling priests who went in peril;
and yet this young man, upon whose consecrated hands the oil was
scarcely yet dry, moved and drew his heart in a manner that he had never
yet known. It was perhaps something in the priest's face that had so
affected him; for there was a look in it of a kind of surprised timidity
and gentleness, as if he wondered at himself for being so foolhardy, and
as if he appealed with that same wonder and surprise to all who looked
on him. His voice, too, was gentle, as if tamed for the seminary and the
altar; and his whole air and manner wholly unlike that of some of the
priests whom Robin knew--loud-voiced, confident, burly men whom you
would have sworn to be country gentlemen or yeomen living on their
estates or farms and fearing to look no man in the face. It was this
latter kind, thought Robin, that was best suited to such a life--to
riding all day through north-country storms, to lodging hardily where
they best could, to living such a desperate enterprise as a priest's
life then was, with prices upon their heads and spies everywhere. It was
not a life for quiet persons like Mr. Simpson, who, surely, would be
better at his books in some college abroad, offering the Holy Sacrifice
in peace and security, and praying for adventurers more hardy than