"Father Dorward says that the country round Green Lanes is ripping. And his church is Norman. I expect he'll make you his ceremonarius. You're an awfully lucky chap, you know. He says that next Corpus Christi, he's going to have Mass on the village green. Nobody will know where you are, and I daresay later on you can become a hermit. You might become a saint. The last English saint to be canonized was St. Thomas Cantilupe of Hereford. But of course Charles the First ought to have been properly canonized. By the time you die I should think we should have got back canonization in the English Church, and if I'm alive then I'll propose your canonization. St. Cyril Pomeroy you'd be."
Such were the bright colours in which Mark painted Cyril's future; when he had watched him wave his farewells from the window of the departing train at Waterloo, he felt as if he were watching the bodily assumption of a saint.
"Where have you been all the evening?" asked Uncle Henry, when Mark came back about nine o'clock.
"Your insolence is becoming insupportable. Get away to your room."
It never struck Mr. Lidderdale that his nephew was telling the truth.
The hue and cry for Cyril Pomeroy began at once, and though Mark maintained at first that the discovery of Cyril's hiding-place was due to nothing else except the cowardice of Hacking, who when confronted by a detective burst into tears and revealed all he knew, he was bound to admit afterward that, if Mr. Ogilvie had been questioned much more, he would have had to reveal the secret himself. Mark was hurt that his efforts to help a son of Holy Church should not be better appreciated by Mr. Ogilvie; but he forgave his friend in view of the nuisance that it undoubtedly must have been to have Meade Cantorum beleaguered by half a dozen corpulent detectives. The only person in the Vicarage who seemed to approve of what he had done was Esther; she who had always seemed to ignore him, even sometimes in a sensitive mood to despise him, was full of congratulations.
"Oh, I took a cab," said Mark modestly. "One from the corner of Cranborne Road to Slowbridge, and another from Paddington to Waterloo. We had some sandwiches, and a good deal of ginger-beer at Paddington because we thought we mightn't be able to get any at Waterloo, but at Waterloo we had some more ginger-beer. I wish I hadn't told Hacking. If I hadn't, we should probably have pulled it off. Old Dorward was up to anything. But Hacking is a hopeless ass."