With all this we have yet come no further than the noontime of the Monday; but I have yet one more thread to gather up before I come again to my proper part in this tale.  
That stranger, the sight of whose back so frighted me, foolishly clad in boy's garments, that I dared not risk encounter with the gaze of his eyes, was, though, alas! I knew it not, my brother Philip. When I did pass through the great hall on my way to the stables, he had just come to an end of some talk with Simon Emmet, who was then gone to fetch Sir Michael.
 
From his errand Simon hoped little good, fearing of the ills that might arise from Philip's return at this conjuncture, most of all the perturbation of spirit into which it was like to cast his master. So much, indeed, he said, with such plainness as his old and unbroken affection for my brother would allow. There is no little reason to suppose that, even more than the lad's father, Simon Emmet had been grieved by Philip's adoption of his mother's religion. For Philip, upon his arrival and encounter with the old man, was no sooner recognized than he was asked if it were indeed true that he was become a priest: and when Simon was assured that so it was, he counselled a speedy departure, since no good would come, Sir Michael being minded as he was, of their meeting. Being told, with that gentle severity which did use to sit very nobly upon my brother, that he must inform his master with no more ado, he yet in going must turn at the door to deliver a parting bolt through the man he loved at the creed he abhorred.
 
"Now, I bethink me, Master Philip," says Simon, "there is, when all is said, some good come of your heresy." And when Philip said gently that he hoped indeed it was so, but saw not how he meant it, Simon gave answer that, old man and sick though he was, Sir Michael upon that dire news had gotten a mind to live, and had lived ever since, in the firm intent that, as long as he might prevent, a Papist should never rule at Drayton.
 
"But, Simon," says Philip, with a sadness political rather than religious, "there was surely a time when my dear father had preferred a Papist in his house to a Dutch Calvinist on the throne."
 
"Ay, Master Phil," says Simon, with an old man's chuckle of much cunning, "but that was before the throne had tried a Papist," and so left him.
 
And I do suppose it was while I listened unseen to little Prue's willing news from her lover on the flags of the stable-yard that my two nearest kin were threshing out, in the great hall behind me, a question that can never be settled. There was no quarrel between them, but little that was common to their two minds. And that day the little seemed altogether naught. Yet in temper the two men were as like as unlike in thought.
 
Now Philip's change of faith had but strengthened, and in a manner embittered, the old Cavalier devotion to the house of Stuart. Being commissioned by that great religious society of which he was a member, and whose power is as far-reaching as its means are often hidden and subtile, to travel from London through the southern and western parts of England, exhorting, persuading, and commanding the Catholic gentry to remain constant in the royal cause, he had, at the end of two months so spent, at last arrived among us. He now told his father that he held it within the spirit of his commission, if not of its letter, to use upon him, did he waver in that political faith of which his life hitherto was so noble an exhibition, the same arguments and modes of appeal he was daily employing upon those of the true faith.
 
"You lack, however, in dealing with me, my son, one weapon—and that your strongest," said his father.
 
"And that, sir?" said Philip.
 
"The appeal to religious authority, my boy. And yet I scarce see by what means you do bring it in use; for I hear that His Holiness is ever at war of one kind or another with King Lewis, and favors rather the cause of that alliance of the Empire with the Protestant Princes, of which His young Highness of Orange is the soul and spirit. I warrant, lad," said the old man, with some grimness of humor, "you find the Pope but an unhandy weapon in your schemes and plots."
 
"I obey orders, sir, but do not deal in plots," the son replied, with a pride that matched the father's.
 
"Art not a Jesuit?" asked Sir Michael.
 
And Philip answering, proudly and yet with much humility, that he was, Sir Michael would have known of him what he did when the bidding of the Society of Jesus ran counter to His Holiness's policy, or enjoined action inconvenient with the honor of a gentleman. But Philip, avoiding the former question, was yet stung into reply on the second, saying boldly that the spiritual descendants of Loyola were much belied, and had no traffic in the plotting of underhand schemes.
 
To this his father, with much warmth, but with a greater kindne............