exclaimed:

"For shame, my children, for shame! Is it to be one against a
hundred? Is that Alsatia's honour? What has the lad done?"

Cuthbert raised his eyes and beheld the tonsured head of a priest
clad in a rusty black cassock, who was standing at the only window
to be seen in a blank wall somewhat higher than that of the other
houses surrounding it. The effect of those words on the angry
multitude was wonderful. The hands raised to strike were lowered,
and voices on all sides exclaimed:

"It is Father Urban; we may not withstand him."

Still the anger of the mob was not calmed in a moment, and fierce
voices exclaimed in threatening accents:

"A spy! he is a spy!"

"Then bring him hither to me; I will judge him," said the priest,
in the same tones of calm assurance. "If I find him worthy of
death, I will give him over to your hands again."

"That will do; Father Urban shall judge him!" cried a brawny fellow
who seemed to be something of a leader with his fellows. "The
Father never lied to us yet. He will give him back if he finds him
a spy."

Cuthbert was now jostled and hustled, but not in the same angry
fashion, to a small narrow door in a deep embrasure, and when this