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It Might Have Been: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot

by Emily Sarah Holt · English · Gutenberg #25834 · 662,120 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: It Might Have Been: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot

Author: Emily Sarah Holt

Illustrator: M. Irwin


        
Release date: June 19, 2008 [eBook #25834]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25834

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: THE STORY OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




It might have been, by Emily Sarah Holt.

_______________________________________________________________________
This book is mainly about the treasonable plot to blow up Parliament, by
mining through to its lowest floor, or basement, from an adjacent house.
This plot was hatched by a number of Catholic gentlemen, and was quite
ingenious.  These people came from a wide area of England, and numbered
about thirty.  One point of interest to your reviewer is that one of the
places where they met, or retreated to when not personally involved in
mining, was a house called White Webbs, just on what is now the northern
limit of London.  This house is now in use as a very nice and popular
restaurant, well known to me.  It was at the time a disused hunting
lodge in Enfield Chase.

The discovery of the plot, and the execution of its participants is
celebrated every year in Britain, with great displays of fireworks, on a
day (5th November) named after one of the plotters, Guy Fawkes.  It is
interesting to learn so much more about the background of this plot.

Emily Holt wrote a large number of books with a historical background.
This book is the third of a series involving a family from Derwent-water
in the north of England.  The link with the Gunpowder plot is rather
weak, but worth reading if you enjoyed the first two books of the
series.  On the other hand the majority of the book deals with the plot,
and is very well researched, and told in a very plausible manner.

As usual with this author you will find that there are a good many
footnotes, which we have done our best to make available but not
intrusive.  There is a great deal of conversation in Elizabethan
English, but this will not bother you if you are used to reading the
plays of Shakespeare.  Finally, there are a few short extracts from
contemporary letters, in which the spelling would not pass muster these
days, but there were no real standards of spelling in those times.  In
a very few cases in these letters we have adjusted the spelling to give
you, the reader, greater ease in comprehending them.

You may care to make this book into an audiobook, in which case it will
take about 12.5 hours to play.  We hope you will do this because it will
make it much easier for you to enjoy the book.

________________________________________________________________________
IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.



PREFACE.

"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are
the ways of death."  That is one of the main lessons to be learned from
the strange story of the Gunpowder Plot.

The narrative here given, so far as its historical portion is concerned,
is taken chiefly from original and contemporaneous documents.  It has
been carefully kept to facts--in themselves more interesting than any
fiction--and scarcely a speech or an incident has been admitted, however
small, for which authority could not be adduced.

Those of my Readers who have made the acquaintance of _Lettice Eden_,
and _Joyce Morrell's Harvest_, will meet some old friends in this tale.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE LAST NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME.

  "Which speaks the truth--fair Hope or ghastly Fear?
          God knoweth, and not I.
  Only, o'er both, Love holds her torch aloft,
          And will, until I die."

"Fiddle-de-dee!  Do give over snuffing and snivelling and sobbing, and
tell me if you want your warm petticoat in the saddle-bag.  You'd make a
saint for to swear!"  More sobs, and one or two disjointed words, were
all that came in answer.  The sobbing sister, who was the younger of the
pair, wore widow's mourning, and was seated in a rocking-chair near the
window of a small, but very comfortable parlour.  Her complexion was
pale and sallow, her person rather slightly formed, and her whole
appearance that of a frail, weak little woman, who required perpetual
care and shielding.  The word require has two senses, and it is here
used in both.  She needed it, and she exacted it.

The elder sister, who stood at the parlour door, was about as unlike the
younger as could well be.  She was quite a head taller, rosy-cheeked,
sturdily-built, and very brisk in her motions.  Disjointed though her
sister's words were, she took them up at once.

"You'll have your thrum hat, did you say?  [Note 1.]  Where's the good
of crying over it?  You've got ne'er a thing to cry for."

Another little rush of sobs replied, amid which a quick ear could detect
the words "unfeeling" and "me a poor widow."

"Unfeeling, marry!" said the elder sister.  "I'm feeling a whole warm
petticoat for you.  And tears won't ward off either cramp or rheumatism,
my dear--don't think it; but a warm petticoat may.  Will you have it, or
no?"

"Oh, as you please!" was the answer, in a tone which might have suited
arrangements for the speaker's funeral.

"Then I please to put it in the saddle-bag," cheerily responded the
elder.  "Lettice, come with me, maid.  I can find thee work above in the
chamber."

A slight sound behind the screen, at the farther end of the parlour,
which sheltered the widow from any draught proceeding from the window,
was followed by the appearance of a young girl not hitherto visible.
She was just eighteen years of age, and resembled neither of the elder
ladies, being handsomer than either of them had ever been, yet not
sufficiently so to be termed beautiful.  A clear complexion, rosy but
not florid, golden-brown hair and plenty of it, dark grey eyes shaded by
dark lashes, and a pleasing, good-humoured, not self-conscious
expression--this was Lettice, who said in a clear musical voice, "Yes,
Aunt," and stood ready for further orders.

As the door shut upon the aunt and niece, the former said, as if to the
sister left behind in the parlour--

"A poor widow!  Ay, forsooth, poor soul, that you are! for you have made
of your widowhood so black a pall that you cannot see God's blue sky
through it.  Dear heart, but why ever they called her Faith, and me
Temperance!  I've well-nigh as little temperance as she has faith, and
neither of them would break a cat's back."

By this time they were up in the bedchamber; and Lettice was kept busy
folding, pinning, tying up, and smoothing out one garment after another,
until at last her aunt said--

"Now, Lettice, bring thine own gear, such as thou wilt need till we
light at Minster Lovel, for there can we shift our baggage.  Thy black
beaver hat thou wert best to journey in, for though it be good, 'tis
well worn; and thy grey kirtle and red gown.  Bring the blue gown, and
the tawny kirtle with the silver aglets [tags, spangles] pendant, and
thy lawn rebatoes, [turn-over collar] and a couple of kerchiefs, and thy
satin hat Thou wert best leave out a warm kerchief for the journey."

"And my velvet hood, Aunt, and the green kirtle?"

"Nay, I have packed them, not to be fetched out till we reach London.
Thou mayest have thy crimson sleeves withal, an' it list thee."

Lettice fetched the things, and her aunt packed them in one of the great
leather trunks, with beautiful neatness.  As she smoothed out the blue
kirtle, she asked--"Lettice, art thou sorry to be gone?"

"Truly, Aunt, I scarce know," was the answer.  "I am sorry to leave Aunt
Milisent and my cousins, and Aunt Frances,"--but Aunt Frances was an
evident after-thought--"and I dare say I shall be sorry to leave all the
places I know, when the time comes.  But then so many of us are going,--
you, and Grandmother, and Aunt Edith, and Cousin Aubrey, and Aunt
Faith--and there are so many new places to see, that on the whole I
don't think I am very sorry."

"No, very like not, child."

"Not now," said a third voice, softly, and Lettice looked up at another
aunt whose presence she had not previously noticed.  This was certainly
no sister of the two plain women whose acquaintance we have just made.
Temperance Murthwaite had outlived her small share of good looks, and
Faith's had long since been washed away in tears; but Edith Louvaine had
been extremely beautiful, and yet was so notwithstanding her forty
years.  Her hair was dark brown, with a golden gleam when the sun caught
it, and her eyes a deep blue, almost violet.  Her voice was sweet and
quiet--of that type of quietness which hides behind it a reserve of
power and feeling.  "At eighteen, Lettice, we are not commonly sorry to
leave home.  Much sorrier at thirty-eight: and at eighty, I think, there
is little to leave but graves."

"Ay, but they're not all dug by the sexton," remarked Temperance,
patting the blue kirtle to make it lie in the hole she had left for it.
"At any rate, the sorest epitaphs are oft invisible save to them that
have eyes to see them."

Edith did not answer, and the work went on.  At length, suddenly, the
question was asked--

"Whence came you, Edith?"

"From Mere Lea, whither I have been with Mother and Aubrey, to say
farewell."

"And for why came you hither?  Not to say farewell, I reckon."

"Nay," replied Edith, smiling.  "I thought I might somewhat help you,
Temperance.  We must all try to spare poor Faith."

"Spare poor Faith!" repeated Temperance, in a sarcastic tone.  "Tell you
what, Edith Louvaine,--if you'd think a bit less of sparing her, and
she'd think a bit more of sparing you, it would be a sight better for
poor Faith and poor Edith too."

"I?  I don't want to be spared," answered Edith.

"No, you don't, and that's just it.  And Faith does.  And she oughtn't.
And you oughtn't."

"Nay, Temperance.  Remember, she is a widow."

"Small chance of my forgetting it.  Doesn't she tell me so six dozen
times a day?  Ask Faith to do any thing she loveth not, and she's always
a widow.  I've had my thoughts whether I could not be an orphan when I'm
wanted to do something disagreeable.  What think you?"

"I think your bark is worse than your bite, Temperance," said Edith,
smiling.

"I'm about weary of barking," answered Temperance, laying smooth a piece
of cobweb lawn.  "I think I'll bite, one of these days.  Deary me, but
there are widows of divers sorts!  If ever there were what Paul calls `a
widow indeed,' it is my Lady Lettice; and she doesn't make a screen of
it, as Faith does, against all the east winds that blow.  Well, well!
Give me that pin-case, Lettice, and the black girdle yonder; I lack
somewhat to fill up this corner.  What hour must we be at Selwick,
Edith?"

"At five o' the clock the horses are bidden."

"Very good.  You'll bide to supper?"

"Nay, not without I can help you."

"You'll not help me without you'll tell Faith she's a snivelling
lazy-bones, and that you'll not, I know.  Go and get your beauty-sleep--
and comfort Lady Lettice all you can."

When Edith had departed, and the packing was finished, the aunt and
niece went down to supper.  It consisted of Polony sausages, sweetmeats,
and an egg-pie--a Lancashire dainty, which Rachel the cook occasionally
sent up, for she was a native of that county.  During the entire meal,
Faith kept up a slow rain of lamentations, for her widowhood, the sad
necessity of leaving her home, and the entire absence of sympathy which
she experienced in all around her: till at last her sister inquired--

"Faith, will you have any more pie?"

"N-o," said Faith with a sob, having eaten nearly half of it.

"Nor any more sausage?"

"Oh no!" she answered, heaving a weary sigh.

"Nor sucketts [sweetmeats; subsequently spelt _succadet_] neither?"

Faith shook her head dolefully.

"Then I'll help you to a little of one other thing, which you need
sorely; and that's a bit of advice."

Faith moaned behind her handkerchief.

"As to quitting home, that's your own choice; so don't go and pretend to
fret over it.  And as to sparing you, you've been spared a deal too
much, and I've been a fool to do it.  And just bethink you, Faith, that
if we are now to make one family with my Lady Lettice and Edith, you'd
best be thinking how you can spare them.  My Lady Lettice is a deal
newer widow than you, and she's over seventy years on her back, and
you've but forty--"

"Thirty-nine," corrected Faith in a choked voice.

"And she's leaving her home not from choice, but because she has no
choice; and she has spent over fifty years in it, and is like an old oak
which can ill bear uprooting.  I only trust those Newcastle Louvaines
will get what they deserve.  I say it's a burning shame, never to come
forward nor claim aught for fifty years, until Sir Aubrey and both his
sons were gone, and then down they pounce like vultures on the widow and
her orphan grandson, and set up a claim, forsooth, to the estate--after
all these years!  I don't believe they have any right--or at any rate,
they've no business to have it: and if my Lady Lettice had been of my
mind, she'd have had a fight for it, instead of giving in to them; and
if Aubrey Banaster had had a scrap of gumption, he'd have seen to it.
He is the eldest man of the family, and they're pretty nigh all lads but
him.  Howbeit, let that pass.  Only I want you, Faith, to think of it,
and not go treating my Lady Lettice to a dish of tears every meal she
sits down to, or she'll be sorry you're her daughter-in-law, if she
isn't now; and if her name were Temperance Murthwaite it's much if she
wouldn't be."

"Oh, you can say what you like--you always do--"

"Beg your pardon, Faith; I very generally don't."

"You haven't a bit of feeling for a poor widow.  I hope you may never be
a widow--"

"Thank you; I'll have a care of that.  Now, Lettice! jump up, maid, and
don your hat and mantle, and I will run down with you to Selwick while
there's a bit of light.  My Lady Lettice thought you'd best be there
to-night, so you could be up early and of some use to your Aunt Edith."

It was not Temperance Murthwaite's custom to let the grass grow under
her feet, and the three miles which lay between the little house at
Keswick and Selwick Hall were put behind her and Lettice when another
hour was over.

Selwick Hall stood on the bank of Derwentwater, and was the residence of
Lettice's grandmother, the widowed Lady Louvaine, her daughter Edith,
her grandson Aubrey, and Hans Floriszoon, the orphan nephew of an old
friend, Mynheer Stuyvesant, who had been adopted into the family when a
little child.  It was also theoretically the abode of Lettice's Aunt
Faith, who was Aubrey's mother, and who practically flitted from the one
house to the other at her rather capricious will.  It had become her
habit to depart to Keswick whenever her feelings were outraged at
Selwick; and as Faith's feelings were of that order which any thing
might outrage, and nobody knew of it till they were outraged, her abode
during the last six years had been mainly with the sister who never
petted her, but from whom she would stand ten times more than from the
tenderer hearts at Selwick.

Lettice's hand was on the door when it opened, and there stood her
Cousin Aubrey.

"Good even, Aunt Temperance," said he.  "You are right in time for
supper."

"Thank you, Master Aubrey Late-hours," replied she; "'tis a bit too late
for my supper, and Lettice's likewise, without she can eat two of a
night.  How is it with my Lady Lettice?  I hope, lad, you help and
comfort her all you can."

Aubrey looked rather astonished.

"Comfort her?" he said.  "She's all right."

"How old are you, Aubrey?"

"Why, Aunt Temperance, you know I was twenty last month."

"One makes blunders betimes, lad.  That speech of thine sounded about
ten."

"What mean you, Aunt Temperance?"

"Nay, lad, if God have not given thee eyes and brains, I shall be
ill-set to do it.--Run in, Lettice.  _No_, I'm not coming--not while
to-morrow morning.  Remember to be up early, and help all you can--both
of you.  Good even."

Temperance shut the door, and they heard her quick foot tread sharply
down the gravel walk.

"I say, 'tis jolly moving house, isn't it?" said Aubrey.

"I can't think why Aunt Temperance supposes that Grandmother or any body
should want comforting."

"Well, we are young, and she is old," replied Lettice; "I suppose old
folks care more about those things, perhaps."

"Oh, 'tis but because they are lazy and have the rheumatism," said
Aubrey, laughing.  "Beside, Grandmother cares not about things like
Mother.  Mother's for ever fretting, but Grandmother's always cheery."

The cousins left the deep whitewashed porch and the oak-panelled hall,
and went forward into the chief sitting-room of the house, known as the
great parlour.  The word "withdrawing-room" was still restricted to
palaces and palatial mansions, and had not descended so low as to a
country gentleman's house like Selwick Hall.  The great parlour was a
large room with a floor of polished oak, hung with tapestry in which the
prevailing colour was red, and the chairs held cushions of red velvet.
On the tiled hearth a comfortable fire burned softly away, and in a
large chair of dark carved wood beside it, propped up with cushions of
red velvet, sat an old lady of seventy-six, looking the very picture of
comfort and sweetness.  And though "her golden hairs time had to silver
turned," and she was now a widow indeed, and desolate, some of my
readers may recognise their old friend Lettice Eden.  Her eyes, though a
little sunken, kept their clear blue, and her complexion was still fair
and peach-like, with a soft, faint rose-colour, like a painting on
china.  She had a loving smile for every one, and a gentle, soothing
voice, which the children said half cured the little troubles wherein
they always ran to Grandmother.  Aunt Faith was usually too deep in her
own troubles, and Aunt Edith, though always kind, was also invariably
busy; while there was considerable hesitation in making an appeal to
Aunt Temperance, who might answer it with a box on the ear instead of a
comforting kiss, or at best had an awkward way of turning the tables on
the plaintiff by making him out to be the offender instead of the
defendant.  But nobody ever hesitated to appeal to Grandmother, whose
very rebukes fell as softly as rose-leaves, and were always so justly
deserved that they had twice the effect of those which came from
perpetual fault-finders.  Aubrey had grown up in this atmosphere, but it
was much newer to his cousin Lettice, the daughter of Dudley Murthwaite
and Helen Louvaine.  Until she was twelve years old, Lettice had dwelt
with her father at Skiddaw Force, her Aunt Temperance having supplied
the place of the dead mother who had faded from her child's memory, for
Helen passed away when her daughter was only two years old.  It had not
been exactly Dudley's choice which had placed Temperance in that
position.  He would have preferred his wife's youngest sister, Edith, to
fill the vacant place of mother to his little girl; but Edith firmly
though kindly declined to make her home away from Selwick Hall.  The
natural explanation of course was that she, being the only unmarried
daughter of the house, preferred to remain with her parents.  Edith said
so, and all her friends repeated it, and thought it very natural and
proper.  And no one knew, except God and Edith, that the reason given
was only half the truth, and that the last place in this world which
Edith Louvaine could take was the place of that dead sister Helen who
had so unconsciously taken the one thing which Edith coveted for
herself.  Thus thrown back on one of his own sisters, Dudley tried next
to persuade Faith to make her home with him.  It might have been better
for Faith if she had done so.  But she liked the more luxurious life of
Selwick Hall, where she had only to represent herself as tired or poorly
to have any exertion taken for her by some one else; and she was one of
those unconscious impostors who begin by imposing on themselves.
Whatever she wished to do, she was always capable of persuading herself
that she ought to do.  Faith therefore declined to remove to her
brother's house.  The last resource was Temperance, who, when appealed
to, averred herself perfectly ready to go wherever she was most wanted.
One baggage-horse would be enough for her luggage, she thanked goodness;
she had two gowns for winter and two for summer, and no reasonable woman
ought to have any more.  As to ruffs and puffs, cuffs and muffs, she
troubled herself with none of those ridiculous vanities.  A plain laced
bodice and skirt were good enough to work in, and a pair of stout shoes
to keep her out of the mire, with a hat and kerchief for outdoor wear,
and a warm cloak for cold weather.  Her miscellaneous possessions were
limited to a big work-basket, two silver spoons and a goblet, and three
books--namely, a copy of the four Gospels, a Prayer-book, and Luther on
the Lord's Prayer.  Packing and unpacking were small matters.  In these
circumstances, and Temperance's change of residence was the affair of an
afternoon.  Six years afterwards her brother Dudley died; and
Temperance, taking into consideration the facts that Skiddaw Force was a
very lonely place, having no house within some miles save a few isolated
cottages of charcoal-burners and shepherds; that a small house at
Keswick belonged to Lettice; and that the child's grand-parents on the
mother's side were desirous to have her near them, let the house at
Skiddaw Force, and came to live at Keswick.

The family at Selwick Hall had once been much larger than now.  All were
gone but these few--Milisent to another home; Anstace, Walter, and Helen
lay in the churchyard, and Ned, the father of young Aubrey, under the
waves of the North Atlantic; and then Mynheer Stuyvesant, the old Dutch
gentleman who had been driven from his own land for the faith's sake,
and having been the boys' tutor, had stayed for love after necessity was
over, took his last journey to the better country; and dear, honest,
simple Cousin Bess Wolvercot, friend and helper of all, went to receive
her reward, with--

  "Nothing to leave but a worn-out frame,
          And a name without a stain;
  Nothing to leave but an empty place,
          That nothing could fill again--"

And after that, Lady Lettice felt herself growing old.  The evening
shadows crept further, and her right hand in household affairs was gone;
but with the constant love and aid of Edith, she held on her way, until
the sorest blow of all fell on her, and the husband who had been ever
counsellor and comforter and stay, left her side for the continuing
City.  Since then, Lettice Louvaine had been simply waiting for the day
when she should join him again, and in the interim trying through
growing infirmities to "do the next thing,"--remembering the words
uttered so long ago by his beloved cousin Anstace, that some day the
next step would be the last step.

When Sir Aubrey Louvaine died, at the age of seventy-nine, two years
before the story opens, Aubrey, his grandson and namesake, became the
owner of Selwick Hall: but being under age, every thing was left in the
hands of his grandmother.

The pang of Lady Louvaine's bereavement was still fresh when another
blow fell on her.  Her husband had inherited Selwick from a distant
cousin, known in the neighbourhood as the Old Squire.  The Old Squire's
two sons, Nicholas and Hugh, had predeceased him, Sir Aubrey had taken
peaceable possession of the estate, and no one ever doubted his title
for fifty years, himself least of all.  Three months after his death,
Lady Louvaine was astounded to receive a lawyer's letter, claiming the
Selwick lands on behalf of one Oswald Louvaine of Newcastle, a young man
who asserted himself to be the grandson of the long-deceased Hugh.  His
documentary proofs were all in order, his witnesses were numerous and
positive, and Lady Louvaine possessed no counter-proof of any kind to
rebut this unheard-of claim.  After a vain search among her husband's
papers, and a consultation with such of her friends and relatives as she
judged suitable, she decided not to carry the matter into a court of
law, but to yield peaceable possession to young Oswald, on consideration
of his giving her a writ of immunity from paying back dues of any kind,
which indeed it would have been quite out of her power to discharge.
Sir Aubrey's income was comfortably sufficient for the family wants, but
there was little to spare when both ends had met.  Mr Oswald accepted
the terms as an immense favour on his part; and at the age of
seventy-six Lady Louvaine was deprived of the home wherein she had dwelt
for fifty-six years, and summoned like Abraham to go forth into the land
which God would show her.

Where to go was the next question.  Her daughter Milisent, with her
husband Robert Lewthwaite, would gladly have received her, and implored
her to come to them; but nine children, a full house, and a small
income, barred the way in that direction.  No offer of a home came from
Red Banks, where the children of her eldest daughter Anstace lived, and
where the income was twice as large as at Mere Lea, while the family did
not amount to half the number.  Temperance Murthwaite trudged up to
Selwick to offer the tiny house which was part of Lettice's little
patrimony, actually proposing herself to go to service, and leave
Lettice in her grandmother's care.  This Faith regarded as a cruel
injury, and Lady Louvaine would not hear of it.  From her
daughter-in-law.  Mrs Walter Louvaine, at Kendal, came a
sweetly-perfumed and sweetly-worded letter, wherein the writer offered--
a thousand apologies, and a dozen excuses for not receiving her dear and
revered mother.  Her grief in having so to write, she assured them, was
incalculable and inconsolable.  She begged that it might be taken into
consideration that Diana was shortly to be married, and would require a
trousseau--which, she did not add, comprised a pound of gold lace, and
six pairs of silk stockings at two guineas the pair: that Montague,
being in a nobleman's household, was an appalling expense to her; that
the younger boys were growing up and would require situations found for
them, while Jane and Frances would some day need portioning: all which
facts were so many heavy burdens,--and had not the Apostle said that he
who neglected to provide for his own was worse than an infidel?  Lady
Louvaine received this letter with a slight sigh, a gentle smile, and
"Poor Frances!"  But the usually calm, sunny temper of Edith was not
proof against it.  She tore the letter in two and flung the fragments
into the fire.

"Edith, my dear daughter!" ejaculated her astonished mother.

"Mother, I can't stand it!" was the response.  "I must either do this or
something worse.  And to drag in the Apostle Paul as a prop for such
hypoc--I'll just go and churn, and perhaps I can talk like a Christian
when I come back!"

Such things as these did not move Lady Louvaine.  But there were two
things which did move her, even to tears.  The first was when Hans
brought her a little box in which lay five silver pieces, entreating her
to accept them, such as they were--and she found after close
cross-examination that part of the money was the boy's savings to buy
cherished books, and part the result of the sale of his solitary
valuable possession, a pair of silver buckles.  The other took place
when notice was given to all the servants.  Each received his or her
wages, and a little token of remembrance, with bow or courtesy, and an
expression of regret on leaving so kind a mistress, mingled with good
wishes for her future welfare: all but one.  That one was Charity, the
under-housemaid from Pendle.  Charity rolled up her arms in her apron,
and said curtly--"Nay!"

"But, Charity, I _owe_ you this," responded her mistress in some
surprise.

"If you're bound to reckon up, my Lady, betwixt you and me, there mun be
somewhat set down o' tother side o' th' book," announced Charity
sturdily.  "Yo' mun mind you 'at yo' took me ba'at [without] a
commendation, because nob'ry [nobody] 'd have me at after Mistress
Watson charged me wi' stealing her lace fall, 'at she found at after
amongst her kerchiefs; that's a hundred pound to th' good.  And yo'
nursed me through th' fever--that's another.  And yo' held me back fro'
wedding wi' yon wastrel [scoundrel] Nym Thistlethwaite, till I'd seen a
bit better what manner of lad he were, and so saved me fro' being a
poor, bruised, heart-broke thing like their Margery is now, 'at he did
wed wi'--and that counts for five hundred at least.  That's seven
hundred pound, Madam, and I've nobut twelve i' th' world--I'm bankrupt.
So, if you please, we'll have no reckonings, or I shall come off warst.
And would you please to tell me when you look to be i' London town, and
where you'll 'light first?"

"My good Charity! they named thee not ill," answered Lady Louvaine.  "I
trust to be in London the end of March--nigh on Lady Day; and I light at
the White Bear, in the King's Street, Westminster."

"Pray you, Madam, how many miles is it hence?"

"'Tis about two hundred miles, Charity."

For a moment Charity was silent.  Then she said, "An't like you, Madam,
I'd fain go the first o' March."

Lady Louvaine was a little surprised, for she had given her servants a
month's notice, which would expire on the fifteenth of March.  However,
if Charity preferred to be paid in time instead of money, that was her
own affair.  She assented, and Charity, dropping another courtesy, left
the room.

Lady Louvaine's house in London had been obtained through the Earl of
Oxford, a distant cousin of her husband, in whose household her son
Walter had long before taken unwholesome lessons in fashion and
extravagance.  The Earl, now in his grand climacteric, had outlived his
youthful frivolity, and though he had become a hard and austere man, was
yet willing to do a kindness to his kinsman's widow by engaging a house
for her, and offering for her grandson a squire's place which happened
to be vacant in his household.  She would have preferred some less showy
and more solid means of livelihood for Aubrey, whose character was yet
unfixed, and whose disposition was lighter than she liked to see it: but
no other offered, and she accepted this.

A few days before the time for departure, up trudged Temperance
Murthwaite again.

"Madam," said she, "I'm something 'feared I'm as welcome as water into a
ship, for I dare guess you've enough to do with the hours, but truth to
tell, I'm driven to it.  Here's Faith set to go after you to London."

"Poor child! let her come."

"I can get as far as `poor,' Madam, but I can go no further with you,"
answered Temperance grimly.  "Somebody's poor enough, I cast no doubt,
but I don't think it's Faith.  But you have not yet beheld all your
calamities.  If Faith goes, I must go too--and if I go, and she, then
must Lettice."

"Dear Temperance, I shall be verily glad."

"Lady Lettice, you're too good for this world!--and there aren't ten
folks in it to whom I ever said that.  Howbeit, you shall not lose by
me, for I purpose to take Rachel withal and she and I can do the
housework betwixt us, and so set Edith free to wait on you.  Were you
thinking to carry servants, or find them there?"

"I thought to find one there.  More than one, methinks, we can scarce
afford."

"Well then for that shall Rachel serve: and I'll work the cost of my
keep and more, you shall see.  I can spin with the best, and weave too;
you'll never come short of linen nor linsey while I'm with you--and
Lettice can run about and save steps to us all.  What think you?--said I
well?"

"Very well indeed, my dear: I were fain to have you."

"Then you'll look for us.  Good-morrow!"  The last evening was a busy
one for all parties, and there was little time to spare for indulgence
in remembrance or regret.  It was two hours later than usual, when
Lettice at last lay down to sleep and even then, sleep seemed long in
coming.  She heard her Aunt Edith's soft movements in the neighbouring
gallery, where she was putting final touches to the packing, and
presently they slid unconsciously into the sound of the waterfall at
Skiddaw Force, by the side of which Lettice was climbing up to the Tower
of London.  She knew nothing of the tender, cheerful "Good-night, Mother
dear!" given to Lady Louvaine--of the long, pathetic gaze at the moonlit
landscape--of the silently-sobbed prayer, and the passionate rain of
tears--such different tears from those of Faith!--which left a wet stain
upon Edith's coverlet.  It was hard to leave the old home--hard to leave
the new graves.  But the next thing the young niece heard was
only--"Time to rise, Lettice!" spoken in the usual bright manner--and,
looking up, she saw Aunt Edith fully dressed.

Lettice sprang up in a fright, and scrambled into her clothes with all
the haste possible.  She, who was to have helped Aunt Edith, to be fast
asleep in bed when she was ready!  It was not many minutes before
Lettice was dressed, but her morning prayer had in it sundry things
which were not prayers.

Breakfast was nearly over when a curious rolling sound was heard,
followed by the tramp of horses: and Aubrey jumped up to look, for it
was half-an-hour too soon for the baggage-horses to be brought.  He had
to run into the porch-chamber to see what it was, and before he returned
came old Roger the serving-man, with a letter in his hand, which he gave
to his mistress.  She opened the letter, but finding it somewhat
difficult for dim eyes to make out, she gave it back to Roger, desiring
him to read it.  [Note 2.]  So Roger read:--

  "Madam,--Since I need be in London this next weekend, where I look to
  tarry some time, and am offered a seat in my good Lord of
  Northumberland's caroche, it were pity that my caroche should go
  thither empty, in especial when so good and old a friend is likewise
  on her journey.  May I therefore beg that your Ladyship will so far
  favour me as to use the caroche as your own, from this day until
  Friday week, when, if it serve your convenience, it may return to me
  at Radcliffe House?  My servants have orders to obey your Ladyship's
  directions, and to serve you in all regards as myself.

  "I kiss the hands of fair Mistress Edith, and beg my best compliments
  to your young gentlemen, and am, Madam, yours to my little power,
  Dilston."

Aubrey had come back whilst Roger was reading, and scarcely gave him
leave to make an end of the letter.

"Madam, 'tis my Lord Dilston's caroche, with six great Flanders horses,
and three serving-men, all as fine as fiddlers, and never a soul in the
caroche--"

"Truly, this is of the Lord's goodness," said Lady Louvaine.  "I did
indeed fear the journey on horseback, but there seemed none other
means."

"The like did I for you, dear Mother," added Edith.  "I am most thankful
for my Lord Dilston's kindly proffer.  It shall ease the journey to you
more than all we could do."

Lady Louvaine bade Edith write an answer, and ordered Roger to take back
to Mere Lea the three saddle-horses lent her by Mr Lewthwaite,
explaining why they were no longer needed.  It was then settled that the
four ladies and Lettice should travel in the coach, Aubrey, Hans, and
Rachel going on horseback.

Hans had gone out, and they saw him talking in the front with Lord
Dilston's postillion.  Now he came back.  "Well, Hans, what wormed you
out of the postillion?" inquired Aubrey.

"His master's goodness," said Hans.  "Have you a bit left for me? or do
you want it all for yourself?"

"It is all for my Lady.  My Lord Dilston was meaning to have gone to
Town himself in his own caroche, till he heard of your Ladyship's
trouble, and then he cast about to know of some friend that was going,
so he might leave it for you.  Then he heard of my Lord of
Northumberland, and he begged a seat in his caroche; and Madam Penelope
stuffed the caroche with all the cushions that were in the house, and a
hamper of baked meats, and wine, and a great fur mantle to lap your
Ladyship in; and my Lord bade the postillion to drive very soft, that
you should not be shaken, without you told him to go fast, and the
footmen were to have a care of you and save you all that they could.
Said I not well, his goodness?"

"Truly, Hans, you did so," answered Edith; "and right thankful should we
all be, first to the Lord, and then to my Lord Dilston, that my dear
mother can now journey in safety and comfort."

Lady Louvaine said, softly, "Bless the Lord! and may He bless this kind
friend!  Truly, I marvel wherefore it is that every one is so good to
me.  It must be, surely, for my dead Aubrey's sake."

"Oh, of course," said young Aubrey, laughing; "they all hate _you_,
Madam, you may be sure."

His grandmother smiled on him, for she understood him.

Now came the Murthwaite sisters trudging up the path, Temperance
carrying a heavy basket, and Faith bearing no greater weight than her
handkerchief, behind which, as usual, she was weeping.

"Good-morrow, Madam," said Aunt Temperance as she came in.  "A fine day
for our journey."

"You're to ride in a caroche, Aunt Temperance!" cried Aubrey.

"Who--me?  No, I thank you, my young Master.  I never set foot in such a
thing in my life, nor never will by my good will.  I like the feel of a
horse under me well enough; but that finicky gingerbread thing, all o'er
gilding--I'd as soon go on a broomstick.  Whose is it?"

"'Tis my Lord Dilston's, that hath most kindly proffered it to Mother
for the journey," replied Edith.  "We had settled that we four, with
Lettice, should journey therein; but if you would rather be on
horseback, Temperance--"

"That would I, by ten mile," said she.  "I hate being cooped up in a
four-post bed, with all the curtains drawn; and that lumbering thing's
no better.  Faith'll go, I don't doubt; any thing that's a bit smart and
showy!! take her: and Lettice may please herself.  I dare say the child
will have a fantasy to ride in a caroche for once in her life."

"Indeed, Aunt, I would like it," answered Lettice, "for very like I may
never have such another chance while I live."

"Truly, that's little like," retorted Temperance with a laugh.  "So have
thy ride, child, if thou wilt.--Dear heart!  Lady Lettice, I ask your
pardon."

"For what, Temperance, my dear?"

"Taking your place, Madam, instead of my own.  Here am I, deciding what
Lettice shall do or not do, when you being in presence, it belongs to
you to judge."

Lady Louvaine gave her gentle smile.

"Nay, if we must stand upon our rights, you, Temperance, as her father's
sister, have the right to choose."

"Then I choose to obey you, Lady Lettice," said Temperance with a
courtesy.

"Madam," now announced Hans from the door, "the baggage is packed, and
the caroche awaiteth your Ladyship."

Edith helped her mother to rise from, her chair.  She stood one moment,
her hand on Edith's arm; and a look came into her eyes such as a
drowning man might give to the white cliffs whereon his home stood,
where his wife and his little children were waiting for him.  So she
stood and looked slowly round the chamber, her eyes travelling from one
thing to another, till she had gone all over it.  And then she said, in
a low, pathetic voice--

"`Get thee out of thy country, and from thy father's house, unto the
land that I will show thee.'  Once before I had that call, and it led me
to him who was the stay and blessing of my life.  Yet again I go forth:
O my Father, let it lead to Thee, unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy
tabernacle!  Remember Thy word unto Thy servant, wherein Thou hast
caused me to hope--`Certainly I will be with thee,'--`I will not fail
thee, nor forsake thee,'--`Fear not, for I have redeemed thee: I have
called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.'  Lord, keep Thine own!--Now, my
children, let us go hence with God."

In something like a procession they went forth from Selwick Hall.  Lady
Louvaine first, leaning on Edith and Hans, to whom Aubrey was always
ready to resign troublesome duties; then Faith, Temperance, Aubrey, and
Lettice.

At the door stood the great coach, painted in dark mulberry-colour and
picked out with gilding, the lining and cushions of blue: and harnessed
to it were the six great horses, dark roan, with cream-coloured manes,
knotted likewise in blue.  The servants wore mulberry-coloured livery,
corded with blue.

Lady Louvaine took her place on the right hand of the coach, facing the
horses, Faith being at her side.  Opposite sat Edith, and Lettice by the
door.

"Aunt Temperance!" called out Aubrey from the doorstep, "you shall have
my horse, if you will; I am going in the caroche."

"You are _what_, Sirrah?" demanded Aunt Temperance, with the severity of
at least one Lord Chief-Justice.

"I shall ride in the caroche," repeated Aubrey calmly.

"Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham!" was the awful
answer.

The young people knew what that meant.  When Temperance said "Dear
heart!" she was just a little surprised or put out; when it was
"Lancaster and Derby!" she was very much astonished or provoked; but
when she supplicated the help of "Northumberland, Cumberland,
Westmoreland, and Durham!" it meant from Aunt Temperance what swearing
would from any one else.

"I should like to know, if you please, Mr Aubrey Louvaine, whether you
are a king, a sick woman, or a baby?"

"Well, Aunt, I don't think I am any of them at present."

"Then you have no business to ride in a caroche till you are.  I never
heard of such a thing in my life.  A man to ride in a caroche!  We shall
have them hemming handkerchiefs to-morrow."

"You won't have me," said Aubrey.

"I won't have you in there," retorted Temperance bluntly, "without my
Lady Lettice call you in, and that she won't.  Will you, Madam?"

"Certainly not, my dear, after your decision," she replied.  "Indeed, I
do think it too effeminate for men, persons of high honour except, or
them that are sick and infirm."

"That rascal's not sick, any more than he's a person of honour.--Thee
bestride thy horse, lad--without thou canst find an ass, which would
suit with thee better.--Now, Hans, come and help me to mount."

When all were mounted, the six great horses tugged and strained at the
big coach, and with a good push from the four farm-servants, it moved
forwards, at first slowly, then faster.  The farm-servants stood
bareheaded, to see the family depart, crying, "God bless you, my Lady,
and bring you home in peace!"

Faith sank back sobbing into the corner, and there were tears in Edith's
eyes which she would not let fall.

"Farewell!" said Lady Louvaine, leaning forward.  "Farewell, my good,
kind old friends--Thomas, William, Isaac, and Gideon--I wish you God's
blessing, and a better head than I."

"Nay, nay, that'll ne'er be, nor couldn't, no wise!" cried old Gideon,
and the rest all echoed his "Nay, nay!"

"Farewell!" said his mistress again, somewhat faintly, as she sank back
into the corner.  "Friends, God will bless me, and He shall bring me
home in peace."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  The thrum is the fringed end of a weaver's web; a thrum hat was
made of very coarse tufted woollen cloth.

Note 2.  This was quite a common occurrence at that time, when
men-servants were usually better educated, and ladies and gentlemen much
less so, than now.



CHAPTER TWO.

THE JOURNEY TO LONDON.

  "And yet, I do remember, some dim sense
          Of vague presentiment
  Swept o'er me, as beyond the gates we turned
          To make the long descent."

At the bridge-end, as they came up, were Milisent and her husband, with
seven of their nine children,--even little Fortune, but five years old,
whom Milisent lifted into the coach and set on her Aunt Edith's knee,
saying "she should say all her life that she had sat in my Lord
Dilston's earache."  Then Milisent came in herself and sat down for a
moment between her mother and Faith, whilst her husband talked with
Aubrey, and all the children crowded about Hans, always a favourite with
children.  After a few minutes' conversation, Robert came up to the
coach-door with--"Time to go, Milly.  We must not tarry Mother on her
journey, for she is like to be weary enough ere she come to its end."

Then Milisent broke down, and threw her arms around her mother, and
cried,--"O Mother, Mother, how shall I do without you?  Must I never see
you again?"

"My Milisent," said Lady Louvaine, "I shall not carry God from thee.
And thou wilt surely see me again, sweet heart, where we shall part no
more for ever."

For a few minutes Milisent wept as if her heart would break; then she
wiped her eyes, and kissed them all round, only breaking down a little
again when she came to her sister Edith.

"O Edith, darling sister, I never loved thee half well enough!"

Edith was calm now.  "Send me the other half in thy letters, Milly," she
replied, "and I will return it to thee."

"Ay, we can write betimes," said Milisent, looking a little comforted.
Then to her niece,--"Now, Lettice, I look to thee for all the news.  The
first day of every month shall we begin to look out for a letter at Mere
Lea; and if my sister cannot write, then must thou.  Have a care!"

"So I will, Aunt," said Lettice.

Milisent alighted with a rather brighter look--she was not wont to look
any thing but bright--Robert took his leave and then came all the
cousins pouring in to say good-bye.  So the farewells were spoken, and
they went on their journey; but as far as they could see until hidden by
the hill round which they drove, Milisent's handkerchief was waving
after them.

Lady Louvaine bore the journey better than her daughters had feared; and
our friends deemed themselves very happy that during the whole of it,
they were not once overturned, and only four times stuck in the mud.  At
the end of the fourth day, which was Friday, they came up to the door of
the Hill House at Minster Lovel.  And as they lumbered round the sweep
with their six horses, Edith cried joyously,--"Oh, there's old Rebecca!"

To Edith Louvaine, a visit to the Hill House was in a sense coming home,
for its owner, her father's cousin, Joyce Morrell, had been to her
almost a second mother.  When people paid distant visits in the
sixteenth century, it was not for a week's stay, but for half a year, or
at least a quarter.  During many years it had been the custom that
visits of this length should be exchanged between Selwick Hall and the
Hill House at Minster Lovel alternately, at the close of every two
years.  But Edith, who was Aunt Joyce's special favourite, had paid now
and then a visit between-times; and when, as years and infirmities
increased, the meetings were obliged to cease for the elders, Edith's
yearly stay of three or four months with the old and lonely cousin had
become an institution instead of them.  Her feeling, therefore, was much
like that of a daughter of the house introducing her relatives to her
own home; for Lady Louvaine was the only other of the party to whom the
Hill House had been familiar in old times.

Its owner, the once active and energetic old lady, now confined to her
couch by partial paralysis, had been called Aunt Joyce by the Louvaines
of the second generation ever since their remembrance lasted.  To the
younger ones, however, she was a stranger; and they watched with curious
eyes their Aunt Edith's affectionate greeting of the old servant
Rebecca, who had guarded and amused her as a baby, and loved her as a
girl.  Rebecca, on her part, was equally glad to see her.

"Run you in, Mrs Edith, my dear," said she; "you'll find the mistress
in the Credence Chamber.  Eh, she has wearied for you!--Good evening,
Madam, and I'm fain to see your Ladyship again.  Would you please to
allow of my help in 'lighting?"

While Rebecca and Hans assisted her mother to descend, Edith ran into
the house with as light and fleet a step as if she were fourteen instead
of forty, and entered a large, low chamber, hung with dark leather
hangings, stamped in gold, where a bright lamp burned on a little table,
and on a low couch beside it lay an old lady, covered over with a fur
coverlet.  She had a pleasant, kindly old face, with fresh rose-colour
in her cheeks, and snow-white hair; and her face lighted up when she saw
Edith, like a candle set in a dark window.  Edith ran to her, and cast
her arms about her, and she said, "My Edith, mine own dear child!" as
tenderly as if she had been her own mother.

Lady Louvaine followed her daughter, leaning on Hans and Rebecca, who
took her up to the couch, and set her down in a large chair furnished
with soft cushions, which stood close beside, as if it were there on
purpose.  She laid her hand upon Joyce's, who fondled it in both hers.
Then Joyce gave a little laugh.

"Lettice, dost thou wonder to hear me laugh?" asked she.  "I seemed like
as if I saw, all at once, that sunshine afternoon when thou earnest
first over from the Manor House, sent of my Lady Norris to make friends
with us.  Dost remember?"

"And thou earnest tripping lightly down the stairs, clad of a russet
gown, and leddest me up to see Anstace.  `Do I remember it!'  Ah, Joyce,
my sister, there be sore changes since that day!"

"Be there so?" said Joyce, and smiled brightly enough.  "A good number
of miles nearer Home, Lettice, and a good number of treasures laid up
for both of us, where neither moth nor rust shall hurt them.  My
treasures are all there which are not likewise thine.  And now let me
see the new gems in thy jewel-box.  Who art thou, my maid?"

"I am Lettice Murthwaite, Madam, if you please."

"My dear heart, I do not please to be called Madam.  I am thine Aunt
Joyce.  Come here and kiss me, if thou wilt."

Lettice knelt down by the couch, and kissed the old lady.

"There is not much of Nell here, Lettice," said Joyce to Lady Louvaine.
"'Tis her father the child is like.  Now then, which of these two lads
is Aubrey--he with the thinking brow, or he with the restless eyes?"

Lady Louvaine called Aubrey, and he came up.

"Why, thou art like nobody," said Aunt Joyce.  "Neither Ned nor Faith,
nor any of Ned's elders.  Lettice, where is Faith? hast not brought her
withal?"

Faith was in the hall, listening to a lecture from Temperance,
embellished by such elegancies as "Stuff and nonsense!" and "Listen to
reason!" which ended up at last with "Lancaster and Derby!" and Faith
came slowly in, with her everlasting handkerchief at her eyes.

"Nay, Faith, sweet heart, no tears!" cried the old lady.  "Sure there's
nought to weep for this even, without thou art so dog-weary that thou
canst not keep them back."

"Mistress Morrell, I wish you good even," said Temperance, coming in
after her sister.  "If you'll but learn Faith to keep that handkerchief
of hers in her pocket, you'll have done the best work ever you did since
we saw you last in Derwent-dale.  She's for ever and the day after
a-fretting and a-petting, for why she'd better tell you, for I'm a
Dutchman if I can make out."

Aunt Joyce looked from one to the other.

"So unfeeling!" came Faith's set form, from behind the handkerchief.
"And me a poor widow!"

The old lady's face went very grave, and all the cheeriness passed out
of it.

"Faith, you are not the only widow in the chamber," she said gently.
"Temperance, my dear, she is weary, maybe."

"She hasn't got a bit of call," rejoined Temperance.  "Sat all day long
in my Lord Dilston's smart caroche, lolling back in the corner, just
like a feather-bed.  Mistress Joyce, 'tis half ill-temper and half
folly--that's what it is."

"Well, well, my dear, we need not judge our neighbours.--Edith, my
child, thou knowest the house as well as I; wilt thou carry thy friends
above?  Rebecca hath made ready My Lady's Chamber for my Lady,"--with a
smile at her old friend--"and the Fetterlock Chamber for Faith and
Temperance.  The Old Wardrobe is for thee and Lettice, and the lads
shall lie in the Nursery."

Names to every room, after this fashion, were customary in old houses.
The party were to stay at Minster Lovel for four days, from Friday to
Tuesday, and then to pursue their journey to London.

In the Old Wardrobe, a pleasant bedchamber on the upper floor, Lettice
washed off the dust of the journey, and changed her clothes when the
little trunk came up which held the necessaries for the night.  Then she
tried to find her way to the Credence Chamber, and--as was not very
surprising--lost it, coming out into a long picture-gallery where she
was at once struck and entranced by a picture that hung there.  It
represented a young girl about her own age, laid on a white couch, and
dressed in white, but with such a face as she had never seen on any
woman in this life.  It was as white as the garments, with large dark
eyes, wherein it seemed to Lettice as if her very soul had been melted;
a soul that had gone down into some dreadful deep, and having come up
safe, was ever afterwards anxiously ready to help other souls out of
trouble.  She would have thought the painter meant it for an angel, but
that angels are not wont to be invalids and lie on couches.  Beside this
picture hung another, which reminded her of her Grandfather Louvaine;
but this was of a young man, not much older than Aubrey, yet it had her
grandfather's eyes, which she had seen in none else save her Aunt Edith.
Now Lettice began to wonder where she was, and how she should find her
way; and hearing footsteps, she waited till they came up, when she saw
old Rebecca.

"Why, my dear heart, what do you here?" said she kindly.

"Truly, I know not," the youthful visitor answered.  "I set forth to go
down the stairs, and missed the right turning, as I guess.  But pray
you, Rebecca, ere you set me in the way, tell me of whom are these two
pictures?"

"Why," said she, "can you not guess?  The one is of your own
grandfather, Sir Aubrey Louvaine."

"Oh, then it is Grandfather when he was young.  But who is this,
Rebecca?  It looks like an angel, but angels are never sick, and she
seems to be lying sick."

"There be angels not yet in Heaven, Mistress Lettice," softly answered
the old servant.  "And if you were to live to the age of Methuselah,
you'd never see a portrait of one nearer the angels than this.  'Tis a
picture that old Squire--Mistress Joyce's father--would have taken, nigh
sixty years since, of our angel, our Mistress Anstace, when she was none
so many weeks off the golden gate.  They set forth with her in a litter
for London town, and what came back was her coffin, and that picture."

"Was she like that?" asked Lettice, scarcely above her breath, for she
felt as if she could not speak aloud, any more than in church.

"She was, and she was not," said old Rebecca.  "Them that knew her might
be minded of her.  She was like nothing in this world.  But, my dear
heart, I hear Mrs Edith calling for you.  Here be the stairs, and the
Credence Chamber, where supper is laid, is the first door on your left
after you reach the foot."

On the Saturday evening, as they sat round the fire in the Credence
Chamber, Edith asked Aunt Joyce if old Dr Cox were still parson of
Minster Lovel.

"Nay," said she; "I would he were.  We have a new lord and new laws, the
which do commonly go together."

"What manner of lord?" inquired Edith.

"And what make of laws?" said Temperance.

"Bad, the pair of them," said the old lady.

"Why, is he a gamester or drunkard?" asked Lady Louvaine.

"Or a dumb dog that cannot bark?" suggested Temperance.

"Well, I'd fain have him a bit dumber," was Aunt Joyce's answer.  "At
least, I wish he'd dance a bit less."

"Dance!" cried Edith.

"Well!" said Aunt Joyce, "what else can you call it, when a man measures
his steps, goes two steps up and bows, then two steps down and bows,
then up again one step, with a great courtesy, and holds up his hands as
if he were astonished--when there's nothing in the world to astonish him
except his own foolish antics?"

"But where doth he this?" said Lady Louvaine: "here in the chamber, or
out of door?"

"Dear heart! in the church."

"But for why?"

"Prithee ask at him, for I can ne'er tell thee."

"Did you ne'er ask him, Aunt?" said Edith.

"For sure did I, and gat no answer that I could make aught of: only some
folly touching Catholic practice, and the like.  And, `Master Twinham,'
said I, `I know not well what you would be at, but I can tell you, I
lived through the days of Queen Mary, and, if that be what you mean by
Catholic practices, they are practices we don't want back again.'  Well,
he mumbled somewhat about being true to the Church, and such like: but
if he be an honest man, my shoes be made of Shrewsbury sweet bread.  We
tumbled all such practices out of the Church, above forty years gone;
and what's more, we'll not stand to have them brought in again, though
there be some may try."

"They will not bring any such folly in while the Queen liveth, I guess,"
answered Edith.

"Amen! but the Queen, God bless her! is seventy this year."

"Would you have her live for ever, Aunt Joyce?" asked Aubrey.

"Would she could!" she answered.  "As to this fellow, I know not what
he'll be at next.  He told me to my face that a Papist was better than a
Puritan.  `Well, Mr Twinham,' said I, `you may be a Papist, but I am a
Puritan, and there I tarry till I find somewhat better.'"

"Why, Joyce!" said Lady Louvaine, smiling, "thou wert not wont to call
thyself a Puritan, in the old days when thou and Bess Wolvercot used to
pick a crow betwixt you over Dr Meade's surplice at Keswick."

"No, I wasn't," said she.  "But I tell you, Lettice, there be things
human nature cannot bear.  A clean white surplice and Christ's Gospel is
one thing, and a purple vestment and an other Gospel is another.  And if
I'm to swallow the purple vestment along with the white surplice, I'll
have neither.  As to old Bess, dear blessed soul! she's in her right
place, where she belongs; and if I may creep in at a corner of Heaven's
door and clean her golden sandals, I shall be thankful enough, the Lord
knows."

"But, Mrs Morrell! sure you never mean to say that surplices be giving
place to purple vestments down this road!" cried Temperance in much
horror.

"Children," said the old lady very solemnly, "we two, in God's mercy,
shall not live to see what is coming, but very like you will.  And I
tell you, all is coming back which our fathers cast forth into the
Valley of Hinnom, and afore you--Temperance, Faith, and Edith--be old
women, it will be set up in the court of the Temple.  Ay, much if it
creep not into the Holy of Holies ere those three young folks have a
silver hair.  The Devil is coming, children: he's safe to be first; and
in his train are the priests and the Pope.  They are all coming: and
you'll have to turn them out again, as your grandfathers did.  And don't
you fancy that shall be an easy task.  It'll be the hardest whereto you
ever set your shoulders.  God grant you win through it!  There are two
dangers afore you, and when I say that, I mean not the torture-chamber
and the stake.  Nay, I am thinking of worser dangers than those--snares
wherein feet are more easily trapped, a deal.  List to me, for ere many
years be over, you will find that I speak truth.  The lesser danger is
if the Devil come to you in his black robes, and offer to buy you with
that which he guesseth to be your price--and that shall not be the same
for all: a golden necklace may tempt one, and a place at Court another,
and a Barbary mare a third.  But worse, far worse, is the danger when
the Devil comes in his robes of light; when he gilds his _lie_ with a
cover of outside truth; when he quotes Scripture for his purpose,
twisting it so subtilely that if the Spirit of God give you not the
answer, you know not how to answer him.  Remember, all you young ones,
and Aubrey in especial, that no man can touch pitch and not be denied.
`Evil communications corrupt good manners:' and they corrupt them worst
and quickest when you see not that they be evil.  If you think the
scales be falling from your eyes, make very sure that they are not
growing on them.  And you can do that only by keeping very close to
God's footstool and to God's Word.  Be sure of this: whatsoever leads
you away from that Book leads you wrong.  I care not what it be--King or
Pope, priest or layman, blind faith or blind reason,--he that neglects
and sets aside the Word of God, for whatever cause, and whatever thing
he would put in his place--children, his ways incline unto Hell, and his
paths unto the dead.  Go not after him, nor follow him.  Mark my words,
and see, twenty and yet more forty years hence, if they come not true."

Aubrey whispered to Lettice, "What made her pick out me in `especial,'
trow?  I'm not about to handle no pitch."

But Hans said, with his gravest face, "I thank you, Madam," and seemed
to be thinking hard about something all the rest of the evening.

On the Sunday morning, all went to church except the two old ladies, who
could honestly plead infirmity.

When they came out, Lettice, who was burning to speak her mind,
exclaimed,--"Saw you ever a parson so use himself, Aubrey?  Truly I know
not how to specify it--turning, and twisting, and bowing, and casting up
of his hands and eyes--it well-nigh made me for to laugh!"

"Like a merry Andrew or a cheap Jack," laughed Aubrey.

"I thought his sermon stranger yet," said Hans, "nor could I see what it
had to do with his text."

"What was his text?" inquired heedless Aubrey.

"`Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,'" repeated Hans.

"Ay, and all he did, the hour through," cried Lettice, "was to bid us
obey the Church, and hear the Church, and not run astray after no
novelties in religion.  And the Church is not the Lord our God, neither
is religion, so far as I see."

"I mind Sir Aubrey once saying," added Hans, "that when a bride talked
ever of herself, and nothing of her bridegroom, it was a very ill augury
of the state of her heart."

"But saw you those two great candlesticks on the holy table?--what for
be they?" said Lettice.

"Oh, they be but ornaments of the church," answered Aubrey, carelessly.

"But we have none such in Keswick Church: and what is the good of
candlesticks without candles?"

"The candles will come," quietly replied Hans.

"Ah! you're thinking of what the old gentlewoman said last night--
confess, Master Sobersides!" said Aubrey.

"I have thought much on it," answered Hans, who walked along, carrying
the ladies' prayer-books; for the road being dirty, they had enough to
do in holding up their gowns.  "And I think she hath the right."

"Hans, I marvel how old thou wert when thou wert born!" said Aubrey.

"I think, very like, about as old as you were," said Hans.

"Well, Mr Louvaine, you are a complete young gentleman!" cried his Aunt
Temperance, looking back at him.  "To suffer three elder gentlewomen to
trudge in the mire, and never so much as offer to hand one of them!
Those were not good manners, my master, when I was a young maid--but
seeing how things be changed now o' days, maybe that has gone along with
them.  Come hither at once, thou vagrant, and give thine hand to thy
mother, like a dutiful son as thou shouldest be, and art not."

"Oh, never mind me!" sighed Faith.  "I have given over expecting such a
thing.  I am only a poor widow."

"Madam," apologised Hans, very red in the face, "I do truly feel ashamed
that I have no better done my duty, and I entreat you not--"

"I was not faulting thee, lad," said Temperance.  "We have already laden
thee with books; and it were too much to look for thee to do thine own
duty and other folks' too.  It's this lazy lad I want.  I dare be bound
he loveth better to crack jests with his cousins than to be dutiful to
his old mother and aunts."

"Temperance, I am only thirty-nine," said Faith in an injured voice.  "I
am the youngest of us three."

"Oh deary me!  I ask your pardon," cried Temperance, with a queer set of
her lips.  "Yes, Madam, you are; Edith is an old woman of forty, and I a
decrepit creature of forty-five; but you are a giddy young thing of
thirty-nine.  I'll try to mind it, at least till your next birthday."

Lettice laughed, and Aunt Temperance did not look angry, though she
pulled a face at her.  Edith smiled, and said pleasantly--

"Come, Aubrey, hand thy mother on my side; I will walk with Lettice and
Hans."

"Aunt Edith," said Lettice, "pray you, why be those candlesticks on the
holy table, with never a candle in them?"

"I cannot tell, Lettice," replied she; "I fear, if the parson dared,
there would be candles in them, and belike will, ere long."

"Think you Aunt Joyce is right in what she said last night?"

"I fear so, Lettice," she answered very gravely.  "We have not yet seen
the last, I doubt, of Satan and his Roman legion."

The same afternoon, Lettice had a talk with old Rebecca, which almost
frightened her.  She went up to the gallery for another look at the two
pictures, and Rebecca passing by, Lettice begged that if she were not
very busy, she would tell her something about them.  In reply she heard
a long story, which increased her reverential love for the dead
grandfather, and made her think that "Cousin Anstace" must have been an
angel indeed.  Rebecca had lived in the Hill House for sixty years, and
she well remembered her mistress's sister.

"Mind you Queen Mary's days, Rebecca?" asked Lettice.

"Eh, sweet heart!" said the old servant.  "They could ne'er be forgot by
any that lived in them."

"Saw you any of the dreadful burnings?"

"Ay, did I, Mrs Lettice," said she,--"even the head and chief of them
all, of my Lord's Grace of Canterbury.  I saw him hold forth his right
hand in the flame, that had signed his recantation: and after all was
over, and the fire out, I drew nigh with the crowd, and beheld his heart
entire, uncharred amongst the ashes.  Ah my mistress! if once you saw
such a sight as that, you could never forget it, your whole life
thereafter."

"It must have been dreadful, Rebecca!" said Lettice.

"Well, it was, in one way," she answered: "and yet, in another, it was
right strengthening.  I never felt so strong in the faith as that hour,
and for some while after.  It was like as if Heaven had been opened to
me, and I had a glimpse of the pearly portals, and the golden street,
and the white waving wings of the angels as he went in."

"Saw you the Bishops burned, Rebecca--Dr Ridley and Dr Latimer?"

"I did not, Mrs Lettice; yet have I seen them both, prisoners, led
through Oxford streets.  Dr Ridley was a man with a look so grave that
it was well-nigh severe: but Dr Latimer could break a jest with any
man, and did, yea, with his very judges."

"Were you ever in any danger, Rebecca?--or Mrs Morrell?"

"I never was, Mrs Lettice; but my good mistress was once well-nigh
taken of the catchpoll [constable].  You ask her to tell you the story,
how she came at him with the red-hot poker.  And after that full quickly
she packed her male, and away to Selwick to Sir Aubrey and her Ladyship,
where she tarried hid until Queen Elizabeth came in."

"Think you there shall ever be such doings in England again?"

"The Lord knoweth," and old Rebecca shook her white head.  "There's not
a bit of trust to be put in them snakes of priests and Jesuits and such
like: not a bit!  Let them get the upper hand again, and we shall have
the like times.  Good Lord, deliver us from them all!"

Lettice went down, intending to ask Aunt Joyce to tell her the story of
the red-hot poker; but she never thought of it again, so absorbed was
she with what the two old ladies were saying as she came in.  They did
not hear her enter: and the first word she heard made her so desirous of
more, that she crept as softly as she could to a seat.  Curiosity was
her besetting sin.

"She used not to be thus," said Lady Louvaine.  "Truly, I know not what
hath thus sorrowfully changed the poor child; but I would some means
might be found to undo the same.  Even for some years after Ned's death,
I mind not this change; it came on right slowly and by degrees."

Lettice felt pretty sure that "she" was Aunt Faith.

"'Tis weakness, I suppose," said Lady Louvaine, in a questioning tone.

"Ay, we are all weak some whither," replied Aunt Joyce; "and Faith's
weakness is a sort to show.  She is somewhat too ready to nurse her
weaknesses, and make pets of them.  'Tis bad enough for a woman to pet
her own virtues; but when she pets her vices, 'tis a hard thing to
better her.  But, Lettice, there is a strong soul among you--a rare
soul, in good sooth; and there is one other, of whose weakness, and what
are like to be its consequences, I am far more in fear than of Faith's."

"Nay, who mean you?" asked Lady Louvaine in a perplexed voice.

"I mean the two lads--Hans and Aubrey."

"Hans is a good lad, truly."

"Hans has more goodness in him than you have seen the end of, by many a
mile.  But Aubrey!"

"You reckon not Aubrey an ill one, I hope?"

"By which you mean, one that purposes ill?  Oh no, by no means.  He is a
far commoner character--one that hath no purpose, and so being, doth
more real ill than he that sets forth to do it of malicious intent."

"Are you assured you wrong not the lad, Joyce, in so saying?"

"If I do, you shall full shortly know it.  I trust it may be so.  But he
seems to me to have a deal more of Walter in him than Ned, and to be
right the opposite of our Aubrey in all main conditions."

"Ah," sighed the widow, in a very tender tone, "there can be no two of
him!"  Then after a little pause, "And what sayest thou to Lettice--my
little Lettice?"

The concealed listener pricked up both her ears.

Aunt Joyce gave a little laugh.  "Not so very unlike an other Lettice
that once I knew," said she.  "Something less like to fall in the same
trap, methinks, and rather more like to fall in an other."

"Now, tell me what other?"

"I mean, dear heart, less conceit of her favour [beauty], and more of
her wisdom.  A little over-curious and ready to meddle in matters that
concern her not.  A good temper, methinks, and more patience than either
of her aunts on the father's side: as to humility--well, we have none of
us too much of that."

"Joyce, wouldst thou like to have us leave Lettice a while with thee?
She could wait on thee and read to thee, and be like a daughter to thee.
I will, if thou wouldst wish it."

"Nay, that would I not, Lettice, for the child's own sake.  It were far
better for her to go with you.  There is an offer thou couldst make me,
of that fashion, that my self-denial were not equal to refuse.  So see
thou make it not."

"What, now?  Not Hans, trow?"

"Edith."

"O Joyce!"

"Ay, dear heart, I know.  Nay, fear not.  I'll not take the last bud off
the old tree.  But, thyself saved, Lettice, there is none left in all
the world that I love as I love her.  Perchance she will find it out one
day."

"Joyce, my dear sister--"

"Hold thy peace, Lettice.  I'll not have her, save now and again on a
visit.  And not that now.  Thou shouldst miss her sorely, in settling
down in thy new home.  Where shall it be?"

"In the King's Street of Westminster.  My good Lord Oxford hath made
earnest with a gentleman, a friend of his, that hath there an estate, to
let us on long lease an house and garden he hath, that now be standing
empty."

"Ay, that is a pleasant, airy place, nigh the fields.  At what rent?"

"Twenty-four shillings the quarter.  Houses be dearer there than up in
Holborn, yet not so costly as in the City; and it shall not be far for
Aubrey, being during the day in the Court with his Lord."

"Lettice, you shall need to pray for that boy."

"What shall I ask for him, Joyce?"

"`That he may both perceive and know what things he ought to do, and
also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.'  Don't let
him rule you.  He is very like to try it, the only man in a family of
women--for he shall make little account of Hans Moriszoon, though there
is more sense in Hans's little finger than in all Aubrey's brains.  If I
can see into the future, Aubrey is not unlike to push you o'er, and Hans
to pick you up again.  Have a care, Lettice.  You remember when Walter
was in Court, with my Lord Oxford?"

"O Joyce!"

Lettice wondered what they meant, for she had never heard of her Uncle
Walter being with Lord Oxford.  She had never much liked Uncle Walter.
He was always rather stiff and stern, and he used to come down sharply
on niece or nephew if they did any thing wrong, yet not like her
Grandfather Murthwaite, who was slow and solemn, and seemed to mourn
over their evil deeds; but Uncle Walter was quick and sharp, and he
snapped at them.  They were under the impression that he never could
have done a naughty thing in the whole course of his life, because he
always seemed so angry and astonished to see the children do so.
Lettice, therefore, was curious to hear about Uncle Walter.

"Well," said Aunt Joyce, "not exactly the same, yet too like.  He'll
take the colour of his company, like Walter: and he shall be evenly
free-handed with his money--"

Lettice stared, though there was nothing to stare at but Aunt Joyce's
big grey cat, curled up in the window-seat Uncle Walter a spendthrift!
she could not even imagine it.  Did she not remember her Cousin Jane's
surprise when her father gave her a shilling for a birthday present?
When Lettice listened again, Aunt Joyce was saying--

"He's no standing-ground.  Whatso be the fantasy of the moment, after it
he goes; and never stays him to think what is like to come thereof, far
less what might come.  But that which causes me fear more for him than
Walter, is the matter of friends.  Walter was not one to run after
folks; he was frighted of lowering himself in the eyes of them he knew,
but methinks he ran not after them as Aubrey doth.  Hast ever watched a
dog make friends of other dogs? for Aubrey hath right the dog's way.
After every dog he goes, and gives a sniff at him; and if the savour
suit, he's Hail, fellow, well met! with him the next minute.  Beware
that Aubrey makes no friend he bringeth not home, so far as you can: and
yet, Beware whom he bringeth, for Lettice' sake.  'Tis hard matter:
`good for the head is evil for the neck and shoulders.'  To govern that
lad shall ask no little wisdom; and if thou have it not, thou knowest
where to ask.  I would his mother had more, or that his father had
lived.  Well! that's evil wishing; God wist better than I.  But the lad
'll be a sore care to thee, and an heavy."

"I fear so much, indeed," said Lady Louvaine, and she sighed.

Then Edith came in, and exclaimed, "What, all in the dark?" and Aunt
Joyce bade her call Rebecca to bring light.  So the naughty Lettice
slipped out, and in five minutes more came boldly in, and no one knew
what she had heard.

As they sat round the fire that evening, Aunt Joyce asked suddenly,
"Tell me, you three young folks, what be your ambitions?  What desire
you most of all things to be, do, or have?--Lettice?"

"Why, Aunt, I can scarce tell," said Lettice, "for I never thought
thereupon."

"She should choose to be beautiful, of course," suggested Aubrey.  "All
women do."

"Marry come up, my young Master!" cried his Aunt Temperance.

"Oh, let him be, Temperance," answered Aunt Joyce.  "He knows a deal
more about women than thou and I; 'tis so much shorter a time since he
was one."

Temperance laughed merrily, and Aubrey looked disconcerted.

"I think I care not much to be beautiful, Aunt, nor rich," said Lettice:
"only sufficient to be not uncomely nor tried of poverty.  But so far as
I myself can tell what I do most desire is to know things--all things
that ever there be to know.  I would like that, I think, above all."

"To know God and all good things were a very good and wise wish,
Lettice," was Aunt Joyce's answer; "but to know evil things, this was
the very blunder that our mother Eve made in Eden.  Prithee, repeat it
not.  Now, Aubrey, what is thy wish?"

"I would like to be a rich king," said he.  "Were I a fairy queen,
Aubrey, I would not give thee thy wish: for thou couldst scarce make a
worser.  `They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,' and
they that seek power be little behind them.  `Godliness is great
riches,' lad, `if a man be content with that he hath.'"

"Methinks, Aunt, that is one of your favourite texts," remarked Edith.

"Ay," said she, "it is.  `Enough is as good as a feast.'  Hans, 'tis thy
turn."

Hans had sat gravely looking into the fire while the others talked.  Now
he looked up, and answered--

"Madam, I am ambitious more than a little.  I desire to do God's will,
and to be content therewith."

"Angels could win no further," answered Aunt Joyce, with much feeling in
her voice.  "Ay, lad; thou hast flown at highest game of all."

"Why, Aunt!" said Aubrey, "never heard I a meaner wish.  Any man could
do that."

"Prithee do it, then," replied Aunt Joyce, "and I for one shall be full
fain to see thee."

"No man ever yet fulfilled that wish," added Edith, "save only Christ
our Lord."

Lady Louvaine sighed somewhat heavily; and Joyce asked, "What is it,
dear heart?"

"Ah!" said she, "thy question, Joyce, and the children's answers, send
me back a weary way, nigh sixty years gone, to the time when I dwelt
bowerwoman with my Lady of Surrey, when one even the Lady of Richmond
willed us all to tell our desires after this manner.  I mind not well
all the answers, but I know one would see a coronation, and an other
fair sights in strange lands: and I, being then young and very foolish,
wished for a set of diamond, and my Lady of Richmond herself to be a
queen.  But my Aubrey's wish was something like Hans's, for he said he
desired to be an angel.  Ah me! nigh sixty years!"

"He hath his wish," responded Aunt Joyce softly.  "And methinks Hans is
like to have his also, so far as mortal man may compass it.  There be
some wishes, children, that fulfil themselves: and aspirations after God
be of that sort.  `He meeteth them that remember Him.'  Lettice, I trust
thou mayest have thy wish to a reasonable length, so far as is good for
thee: and, Aubrey, I can but desire the disappointment of thine, for it
were very evil for thee.  But thou, Hans Floriszoon, `go in peace; and
the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of Him.'"

It was hard work for those two old friends to part, each knowing that it
was almost certain they would never again meet until they clasped hands
in the Paradise of God.  When it came to the farewell, Lady Louvaine
knelt down, though with difficulty--for Joyce could not raise herself--
and the adopted sisters exchanged one long fervent embrace.

"O Joyce, my friend, my sister! my one treasure left to me from long
ago!  We shall never kiss again till--"

Lettice Louvaine's voice was lost in sobs.

"Maybe, dear heart--maybe not.  Neither thou nor I can know the purposes
of God.  If so, farewell till the Golden City!--and if thou win in afore
me at the pearly portals, give them all my true love, and say I shall
soon be at home."

"Farewell, love!  There is none to call me Lettice but thee, left now."

"Nay, sweet heart, not so.  `I have called thee by thy name.'  There
will be One left to call thee `Lettice,' until He summon thee by that
familiar name to enter the Holy City."

So they journeyed on towards London.  It was on the afternoon of the
twenty-fourth of March that they sighted the metropolis at last from the
summit of Notting Hill.  They drove down the Oxford road, bounded on
either side by green hedges, with here and there a house--the busy
Oxford Street of our day--turned down the Hay Market to Charing Cross,
and passed by Essex Gate and its companion portal, the Court Gate,
through "the Court," now known as Whitehall, emerging upon "the King's
Street."  There was no Parliament Street in those days.

As they turned into King Street, it struck the elders of the party that
there seemed to be an unusual stir of some kind.  The streets were more
crowded than usual, men stood in little knots to converse, and the talk
was manifestly of a serious kind.  Lady Louvaine bade Edith look out and
call Aubrey, whom she desired to inquire of some responsible person the
meaning of this apparent commotion.  Aubrey reined in his horse
accordingly, as he passed a gentleman in clerical attire, which at that
date implied a cassock, bands, and black stockings.  Had Aubrey known
it, the narrowness of the bands, the tall hat, the pointed shoes, and
the short garters, also indicated that the clergyman in question was a
Puritan.

"Pray you, Sir, is there news of import come?" inquired the youth: "or
what means this ado?"

The clergyman stopped suddenly, and looked up at his questioner.

"What means it?" he said sadly.  "Friend, the great bell of Paul's was
rung this morrow."

"I cry you mercy, Sir.  Being a countryman, I take not your meaning."

"The great bell of Paul's," explained the stranger, "tolls never but for
one thing, and hath been silent for over forty years."

"Good lack! not the plague, I trust?" cried Aubrey.

"Would it were no worse!  Nay, this means that we are sheep without a
shepherd--that she who hath led us for three-and-forty years, who under
God saved us from Pope and Spaniard, can lead us no more for ever.  Lad,
no worser news could come to Englishmen than this.  Queen Elizabeth hath
passed away."

So, under the shadow of that dread sorrow, and that perilous uncertain
future, they entered their new home.



CHAPTER THREE.

HOW IT FIRST BEGAN.

                  "O Conspiracy!
  Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
  When evils are most free?  Oh, then, by day,
  Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
  To mask thy monstrous visage?"

  _Shakespeare_.

The new home was the midmost of three contiguous houses, standing on the
western side of King Street, and nearly opposite to what is now the
entrance to New Palace Yard.  They were a little larger and more
pretentious than most of the houses in this street, and a goodsized
garden ran backwards from each towards Saint James's Park.  As every
house had then its name and a signboard to exhibit it--numbers being not
yet applied to houses--these were no exception to the rule.  That one of
the trio nearest to the Abbey displayed a golden fish upon its
signboard; the middle one hung out a white bear; while from the
northernmost swung a panel representing an extremely stiff and angular
creature apparently intended to suggest an angel.  The young people made
merry over their sign, Aubrey insisting that Hans was the White Bear,
and Lettice retorting that it was Aubrey himself.

Hans and Aubrey sprang from their horses at the door; and while the
latter rang the bell, the former busied himself in helping the ladies to
alight.  Whether any one would be inside the house was a problem
requiring solution; and they thought it worth while to ascertain this
before going further.  In a moment, quick steps were heard approaching,
and the door was opened by a woman who hardly showed herself behind it.

Lady Louvaine came in first, leaning on Hans.

"Good evening," she said to the portress.  "It was good of my Lord
Oxford to provide--nay!  Charity!"

"Ay, Madam, it's me," said the familiar voice of the old servant, whom
her mistress believed she had left behind in Cumberland.

"Why, old friend! when earnest thou hither?"

"You'd best sit you down afore you hear folks their catechisms," said
Charity, coolly, leading the way to a pleasant parlour hung and
upholstered in green, where a fire was burning on the hearth, and a
large cushioned chair stood beside it.  "When did I come?  Well, let's
see?--it was o' Tuesday last."

"But how?" queried her mistress, in a tone which was a mixture of
astonishment and perplexity.

"Same how as I get to most places, Madam--on my feet."

"You walked to London, Charity?"

"Ay, I did.  I'm good for fifteen miles at a stretch."

"And whence gat you the money for your lodging?"

Charity laughed.  "I never paid a halfpenny for lodging nobut [Note 1]
once, and that was th' last night afore I got here.  Some nights I lay
in a barn upo' th' hay: but most on 'em I got took in at a farm-house,
and did an hour or two's work for 'em i' th' morn to pay for my lodging
and breakfast.  But some on 'em gave it me right out for nought--just
for company like.  I bought my victuals, of course: but I should ha'
wanted them wherever I'd been."

"And what led you to wish for life in London, Charity?"

"Eh! bless you, I want none to live i' London.  It's a great, smoky,
dirty place."

"Then what did you want?"

"I wanted yo'," said Charity, with a nod at her mistress.  "Lady
Lettice, yo'll not turn me away?  If things is so bad you cannot afford
to keep me, you shalln't: I can earn enough by my spinning half th' day,
and serve you i' t' other half.  But yo'll want two: I'm sure Rachel can
ne'er do all th' work, and you'd best have me, for nob'ry else 'll put
so much heart into 't as I shall.  Do let me stop, for I cannot abear to
leave you."

It was a moment before Lady Louvaine could speak.  Then she held out her
hand to Charity.

"My faithful Charity, I will not turn thee away!  So long as I have two
loaves of bread, thou mayest be sure of one."

"Thank God, that's all right!" said Charity with a sigh of evident
relief.  "We's [we shall] get on famous, Rachel and me, and nother on us
'll feel as if we'd been cast away of a desert island, as I've been
feeling afore yo' come.  Eh, but it is a town, is this!"

"Charity, I wonder how you won in the house," said Edith.  "My Lord
Oxford--"

"I've got a bit more gumption, Mrs Edith, than you credit me with.  I
brought a letter to my Lord, or I should ne'er ha' looked to get in
else."

"A letter!--from whom?"

"Fro' Mrs Joyce Morrell, to tell him who I were, and a bit more, I
reckon."

"I asked my Lord Oxford of his goodness to speak to some upholder
[upholsterer] to send in a little necessary furnishing," said Lady
Louvaine, looking round, "such as were strictly needful, and should last
us till we could turn us about: but methinks he hath done somewhat more
than that."

"You'll turn you round middling easy, Madam," answered Charity.  "Th'
upholder were bidden to put th' house to rights all through, and send
the bill to Mistress Joyce.  She gave me lodging fro' Setterday to
Monday, and bade me see to 't that yo' had all things comfortable.
`Don't split sixpences,' she saith; `the bigger the charges the better,
so long as they be for true comfort and not for gimcracks.'  So, Madam,
I hope we've hit your Ladyship's liking, for me and Mrs Joyce, we tried
hard--me at choosing, and she at paying.  So that's how it were."

And dropping a quick courtesy, Charity departed with too much alacrity
for thanks.

Lady Louvaine's eyes followed her.

"The lines are fallen unto us in pleasant places," quoted Edith, softly.

"Ay," answered her mother.  "And the pillar of the cloud hath gone
before."

Charity found Rachel in the kitchen, carrying a carpet-bag and a great
bundle, and gazing round her with a bewildered air.

"Well, lass, what's ta'en thee?" was her greeting.

"Eh, Charity Ashworth, is that thee?  Where art thou fro'?"

"Where are we both come to?  That's more to th' purpose."

"I'm banished my country, that's all I know," said Rachel, blankly.
"I'm glad to see thee, schuzheaw."  [Note 2.]

"Dost thou mean to carry yon for th' rest o' thy life?" demanded
Charity, laying hands on the carpet-bag.  "Come, wake up, lass, and look
sharp, for there'll be some supper wanted."

A very expressive shake of Rachel's head was the response.  But she set
down the bundle, and began to unfasten her sleeves for work.  Sleeves
were not then stitched to the gown, but merely hooked or buttoned in,
and were therefore easily laid aside when needful.

"What's the price o' eggs this road on?" asked she.

"Nought.  We 'n getten th' hens to lay 'em.  Down i' th' market they're
four a penny."

"Eggs--four a penny!" ejaculated the horrified cook.

"Ay--they're a bonnie price, aren't they?  Ten to a dozen the penny at
Keswick.  Chickens be twopence and threepence apiece."

Rachel turned and faced her colleague with a solemn air.  "Charity
Ashworth, wilt thou tell me what we've come here for?"

"`To do our duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to
call us,'" said Charity, sturdily.  "There's twenty hens i' yon yard at
th' end o' th' garden, and two cows i' th' shippen, and three black pigs
i' th' sty,--Mistress Joyce ordered 'em--and two pairs o' hands, and two
brains, and two hearts, and the grace o' God: and if thou wants aught
more, thou'lt have to ask Him for it.  So now let's be sharp and see to
th' supper."

As they sat at breakfast the next morning, which was Lady Day and
Sunday, Lady Louvaine said--

"I would fain know what manner of neighbours we shall have here, whether
pleasant or displeasant; for some of our comfort shall hang thereon."

"Oh, there's a capital fellow at the Golden Fish," cried Aubrey.  "His
name is Tom Rookwood, and his sister Dorothy is the prettiest girl I
have seen this month.  I know nought of the Angel."

"Ah!" said Hans, and shook his head, "I have seen the Angel."

"And is he angelic?" responded Aubrey.

"There be angels good and ill," Hans made answer.  "Madam, I were best
forewarn you--there's a tongue dwelleth there."

"What manner of tongue, Hans?" said Lady Louvaine, smiling.

"One that goes like a beggar's clap-dish," said he; "leastwise, it did
all the while I was in the garden this morning.  She greeted me o'er the
wall, and would know who we were, and every one of our names, and what
kin we were one to the other, and whence we came, and wherefore, and how
long we looked to tarry--she should have asked me what we had to our
breakfast, if I had not come in."

"And how much toldest her?" inquired Temperance.

"Not a word that I could help," answered Hans.  "Indeed, that is the
only comfort of her--that she asks questions so fast you can scarce
slide in an answer.  She was free enough with her information as well--
told me her name, and how many children she had, and that she paid
three-and-fourpence the yard for her perpetuance gown."

"And what is her name?" asked Faith.

"Silence Abbott," said he.

"She scarce answers to it, seemingly," replied Temperance.

"Where made you acquaintance with your Tom Rookwood, Aubrey?" said his
grandmother.

"At the door," said he.  "His father is a gentleman of Suffolk, a
younger son of Rookwood of Coldham Hall.  He has three sisters,--I saw
not the other two; but I say, that Dorothy's a beauty!"

"Well!" replied Temperance.  "Folks say, `As mute as a fish'; but it
seems to me the Golden Fish is well-nigh as talkative as the Angel.
Mind thy ways, Aubrey, and get not thyself into no tanglements with no
Dorothys.  It shall be time enough for thee to wed ten years hence."

"And have a care that Mr Rookwood be himself an upright and God-fearing
man," added his Aunt Edith.

"Oh, he's all right!" answered Aubrey, letting Dorothy go by.  "He saith
he can hit a swallow flying at eighty paces."

"More shame for him!" cried Edith.  "What for should he hit a swallow?"

"He has promised to show me all sorts of things," added Aubrey.

"Have a care," said Lady Louvaine, "that he lead thee not into the
briars, my boy, and there leave thee."

The Monday morning brought a visitor--Mrs Abbott, from the Angel, after
whose stay Edith declared that a day's hard work would have fatigued her
less of the two inflictions.  This lady's freedom in asking questions,
without the remotest sense of delicacy, was only to be paralleled by her
readiness to impart information.  The party at the White Bear knew
before she went home, that she had recently had her parlour newly hung
with arras, representing the twelve labours of Hercules: that she
intended to have roast veal to supper: that her worsted under-stockings
had cost her four-and-sixpence the pair: that her husband was a very
trying man, and her eldest son the cleverest youth in Westminster.

"Worsted stockings four-and-sixpence!" cried Temperance.  "What a sinful
price to pay!  And I declare if they ask not three shillings and
fourpence for a quarter of veal!  Why, I mind the time when in Keswick
it was but sixteen pence.  Truly, if things wax higher in price than now
they are, it shall be an hard matter to live.  This very morrow was I
asked a shilling for a calf's head of the butcher, and eightpence for a
lemon of the costard-monger, whereat I promise you I fumed a bit; but
when it came to threepence apiece for chickens,--Lancaster and Derby!
It shall cost us here ever so much more to live."

"It shall not," said Hans.  "There be five acres of garden, and save for
foreign fruits and spices, you shall ask little of the costard-monger
shortly."

"But who is to dig and dress it?" moaned Faith.  "Aubrey cannot, all the
day with his Lord, even if he were not away o' nights: and Charity shall
have too much to do."

"I have two hands, Madam," answered Hans, "and will very quickly have a
spade in them: and ere I do aught else will I set the garden a-going,
that Rachel and Charity can keep it in good order, with a little
overlooking from you."

"Me!" cried Faith, with a gasp of horror.

"Right good for you!" said her sister.  "I'll not help at that work; I
shall leave it for you.  As to foreign fruits and spices, we'll have
none of them, save now and then a lemon for the Lady Lettice--she loves
the flavour, and we'll not have her go short of comforts--but for all
else, I make no 'count of your foreign spice.  Rosemary, thyme, mint,
savoury, fennel, and carraway be spice enough for any man, and a deal
better than all your far-fetched maces, and nutmegs, and peppers, that
be fetched over here but to fetch the money out of folks' pockets: and
wormwood and currant wine are every bit as good, and a deal wholesomer,
than all your sherris-sack and Portingale rubbish.  Hans, lad, let's
have a currant-bush or two in that garden; I can make currant wine with
any, though I say it, and gooseberry too.  I make no count of your
foreign frumps and fiddlements.  What's all your Champagne but just
gooseberry with a French name to it? and how can that make it any
sweeter?  I'll be bounden half of it is made of gooseberries, if folks
might but know.  And as to your Rhenish and claret, and such stuff, I
would not give a penny for the lot--I'd as soon have a quart of alegar.
Nay, nay! we are honest English men and women, and let us live like it."

"But, Temperance, my dear," suggested Lady Louvaine, with a smile, "if
no foreign fruits had ever been brought to England, nor planted here,
our table should be somewhat scanty.  In truth, we should have but
little, I believe, save acorns and beech-nuts."

"Nay, come!" responded Temperance; "wouldn't you let us have a bit of
parsley, or a barberry or twain?"

"Parsley!" said Lady Louvaine, smiling again.  "Why, Temperance, that
came first into England from Italy the year Anstace was born--the second
of King Edward."  [Note 3.]

"Dear heart, did it so?" quoth she.  "And must not we have so much as a
cabbage or a sprig of sweet marjoram?"

"Sweet marjoram came in when thou wert a babe, Temperance; and I have
heard my mother say that cabbages were brought hither from Flanders the
year my sister Edith was born.  She was five years elder than I, and
died in the cradle."

"Well!" concluded Temperance, "then I'll hold my peace and munch my
acorns.  But I reckon I may have a little salt to them."

"Ay, that mayest thou, and honey too."

The next day, the Golden Fish swam in at the door; and it came in the
form of Mistress Rookwood and her daughter Gertrude, who seemed
pleasanter people than Mrs Abbott.  A few days afterwards came the
Rector, Mr Marshall, with his wife and daughter; and though--or perhaps
because--Agnes Marshall was very quiet, they liked her best of any woman
they had yet seen.  Before they had stayed long, the Rector asked if
Lady Louvaine had made acquaintance with any of her neighbours.  She
answered, only with two houses, the one on either side.

Mr Marshall smiled.  "Well, Mistress Abbott means no ill, methinks,
though her tongue goeth too fast to say she doth none.  Yet is her talk
the worst thing about her.  Tell her no secrets, I pray you.  But I
would warn you somewhat to have a care of the Rookwoods."

"Pray you, Sir, after what fashion?" asked Lady Louvaine.  "If I know
from what quarter the arrow is like to come, it shall be easier to hold
up the shield against it."

"Well," said he, "they come to church, and communicate, and pay all
their dues; they may be honest folks: but this can I tell you, Mr
Rookwood is brother to a Papist, and is hand in glove with divers Popish
perverts.  Wherefore, my Lady Louvaine, I would not have you suffer your
young folks to be too intimate with theire; for though these Rookwoods
may be safe and true--I trust they are--yet have they near kinsmen which
assuredly are not, who should very like be met at their house.  So let
me advise you to have a care."

"That will I, most surely," said she: "and I thank you, Sir, for putting
me on my guard."

In May the King arrived from Scotland, and in June the Queen, with the
Prince, Prince Charles, and the Lady Elizabeth.  "Princess" at this time
indicated the Princess of Wales alone, and the first of our King's
daughters to whom the term was applied, except as heiress of England,
were the daughters of Charles the First.  Henry Prince of Wales was a
boy of nine years old, his sister a child of seven, and the little
Charles only three.  The youthful Princess was placed in the charge of
Lord Harrington, at Combe Abbey, near Coventry--a fact to which there
will be occasion to refer again.  The Princes remained with their
parents, to the great satisfaction of the Queen, who had struggled as
ceaselessly as vainly against the rigid Scottish custom of educating the
heir-apparent away from Court Queen Anne of Denmark was a graceful,
elegant woman, with extremely fair complexion and abundant fair hair.
The King was plain even to ungainliness--a strange thing for the son of
one of the most beautiful women that ever lived.  The wisdom of James
the First has been by different writers highly extolled and
contemptuously derided.  It seems to me to have partaken, like
everything else, of the uncertainty of its author.  He did give
utterance to some apothegms of unquestionable wisdom, and also to some
speeches of egregious folly.  His subjects did not err far when they
nicknamed their Scottish master and their "dear dead Queen," his
predecessor, "King Elizabeth and Queen James."  Yet justice requires the
admission that the chief root of James's many failings was his intense,
unreasoning, constitutional timidity, which would have been ludicrous if
it had been less pitiful.  He could not see a drawn sword without
shuddering, even if drawn for his own defence; and when knighting a man,
it was necessary for the Lord Chamberlain to come to his Majesty's help,
and guide the blade, lest the recipient of the honour should be wounded
by the unsteadiness of the King's hand under the strong shuddering which
seized him.  So afraid was he of possible assassins that he always wore
a thickly-padded cotton garment under his clothes, to turn aside bullet
or dagger.

Lord Oxford came to Town in May, and Aubrey at once began his duties as
a squire in his household.  During June and July, he ran into the White
Bear some half-dozen times in an evening, he said, to assure them that
he was still alive.  In August and September he was more remiss: and
after October had set in, they scarcely saw him once a month.  It was
noticeable, when he did come, that the young gentleman was becoming more
fashionable and courtly than of old.  Lettice asked him once if he had
bidden the tailor to make his garments of snips, since the brown suit
which had been his Sunday best was breaking out all over into slashes
whence puffs of pink were visible.  Aubrey drew himself up with a laugh,
and told his cousin that she knew nothing of the fashions.  Lettice
fancied she caught the gleam of a gold chain beneath his doublet, but it
was carefully buttoned inside so as not to show.

Meanwhile, Hans--whose brown suit did not break out like Aubrey's--was
very busy in the garden, which he diligently dug and stocked.  When this
was done, he applied to a neighbouring notary, and brought home bundles
of copying, at which he worked industriously in an evening.  In the
afternoon he was generally from home; what he did with himself on these
occasions he did not say, and he was so commonly and thoroughly trusted
that no one thought it necessary to ask him.

Edith and Temperance, coming in together one evening, were informed that
Mrs Rookwood had called during their absence, bringing with her
Dorothy, Aubrey's beauty.

"And didst thou think her beauteous, Lettice?" asked her Aunt Edith,
with an amused smile.

"Truly, Aunt Edith, I marvel what Aubrey would be at.  His fancies must
be very diverse from mine.  I would liever a deal have our Rachel."

Temperance laughed, for Rachel had few claims of this nature.

"What like is she, Lettice?"

"She hath jet-black hair, Aunt, and thick black brows, with great
shining eyes--black likewise; and a big nose-end, and pouting big red
lips."

"Humph!  I reckon folks see beauty with differing eyes," said
Temperance.

The coronation did not take place before July.  It was followed by
severe pestilence, supposed to arise from the numbers who crowded into
Town to witness the ceremony.  Temperance kept fires of sweet herbs
burning in the garden, and insisted on every body swallowing liberal
doses of brick and wormwood, fasting, in the morning--her sovereign
remedy against infection.  Mrs Abbott said that her doctor ordered her
powder of bezoar stone for the same purpose, while the Rookwoods held
firmly by a mixture of unicorn's horn and salt of gold.  In consequence
or in spite of these invaluable applications, no one suffered in the
three houses in King Street.  His Majesty was terribly afraid of the
pestilence; all officials not on duty were ordered home, and all
suitors--namely, petitioners--were commanded to avoid the Court till
winter.  A solemn fast for this visitation was held in August; the
statutes against vagabonds and "masterless men" were confirmed, whereat
Temperance greatly rejoiced; and "dangerous rogues" were to be banished.

This last item was variously understood, some supposing it aimed at the
Jesuits, and some at the Puritans.  It was popularly reported that the
King "loved no Puritans," as it was now usual to term those Churchmen
who declined to walk in the Ritualistic ways of the High Church party.
To restrict the term Puritan to Nonconformists is a modern mistake.
When, therefore, James began his reign by large remittances of fines to
his Romish subjects, issued a declaration against toleration, revived
the Star Chamber, and appointed Lord Henry Howard, a Roman Catholic, to
the Privy Council, the Papists were encouraged, and the Puritans took
alarm.  The latter prepared to emigrate on a large scale to the American
plantations, where no man could control them in religious matters; the
former raised their heads and ventured on greater liberties than they
had dared to take during the reign of the dead Queen.  The French
Ambassador, however, curled his lip contemptuously, and informed his
master that James was a hypocrite.

The position of the English Roman Catholics at this time was peculiar
and not agreeable.  But in order to understand it, we must go back for
thirty-five years--to the close of that halcyon period, the earliest ten
years of Elizabeth, when the few Romanists then left in England
generally came to church like other good citizens, and if they chose to
practise the rites of their own faith in private, no notice was taken of
it.  It was not the Protestant Government, but the Papal See, which was
responsible for the violent ending of this satisfactory state of things,
when it was perceived at Rome that the Reformation was so thoroughly
settled, and the nation so completely severed from Latin control, that
(in the words of one of those who attempted the Queen's life) "unless
Mistress Elizabeth were suddenly taken away, all the devils in Hell
should not be able to shake it."  In 1568, therefore, Pope Pius the
Fifth put forth a Bull which excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, deposed
her, absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly cursed
them if they continued to obey her.  To her Protestant subjects, of
course, this act of usurpation was mere waste paper--the private spleen
of an Italian priest who had no jurisdiction in this realm of England.
But to the Romanists it was the solemn decree of Christ by His appointed
Vicar, to be obeyed at the peril of their salvation.  The first visible
effect of the Bull was that they all "did forthwith refrain the church,"
and joined no more with their fellow-subjects in public prayer.  The
Queen contented herself in answer with forbidding the bringing in of
Bulls--which was no more than Edward the First had done before her.  Had
the Pope and the Jesuits been then content to let matters rest, no
difficulty might have arisen: but they would not.  First Mayne, then
Campion, the first Jesuit who entered England, were sent to "move
sedition," and to "make a party in execution of the former Bull."  To
this followed an influx of treasonable books.  It had now become evident
that the Papal Bull was to be no mere _brutum fulmen_ which might be
safely left alone to die out, but a deliberate attempt to stir up
rebellion against the Queen.  For the Government to have kept silence
would have been practically to throw their influence into the scale
against the reign and the life of their Sovereign Lady.

It is now fashionable with a certain section to stigmatise Elizabeth as
a persecutor, and to represent the penal laws against the Papists
enacted in her reign as cruel oppressions of innocent and harmless
persons, enforced simply because they believed certain religious
doctrines.  Those who will carefully follow the facts can hardly avoid
seeing that the disloyalty preceded the coercion, and that if the
Romanists were maddened into plotting against the Government by
oppressive laws, those laws were not due to groundless fear or malice,
but were simply the just reward of their own deeds.  During the five
years of Queen Mary, three hundred men, women, and children, were put to
death for their religious opinions only.  During the forty-four years of
Queen Elizabeth, less than thirty priests, and five harbourers of
priests, were executed, not for their opinions nor their religion, but
for distinctly treasonable practices.  [Note 4.]

When matters had come to this pass, in 1580, the first penal laws were
issued, against recusancy and seditious publications.  The penalty for
recusancy--by which was meant a legal conviction for absence from public
worship on religious grounds--"was not loss of life or limb, or whole
estate, but only a pecuniary mulct and penalty; and that also only until
they would submit and conform themselves and again come to church, as
they had done for ten years before the Pope's Bull."  Twenty pounds per
lunar month was the fine imposed; but this referred only to adult males,
"not being let by sickness."  Compared with the laws of Queen Mary, and
even of her predecessors, this penalty was gentleness itself; and those
modern writers who see in it cruelty and rigour must have little
knowledge of comparative history.  Yet so far was this from stopping the
flow of treason, that a Jesuit mission entered England with the special
purpose of teaching the people that under the Bull of Pope Pius the
Queen stood excommunicated, and that it was a positive sin to obey her.
Their success was only too manifest.  Men of all sorts and conditions,
from peers to peasants, were "reconciled" in numbers by their teaching.
If this were to go on, not only would Elizabeth's life be the forfeit,
but the Reformation settlement would be uprooted and undone, and the
blood of the Marian martyrs would have been shed for nought.

The laws were now made more stringent.  By the Act of 1580 it had been
provided that every priest saying mass should be liable to a fine of two
hundred marks (133 pounds), with half that sum for every hearer, and
both to imprisonment for a year, or in the priest's case until the fine
was paid.  Now, all Jesuits and priests ordained since the Queen's
accession were banished the kingdom, being allowed forty days after the
close of the session; and none were to enter it, on penalty of death.
All persons receiving or assisting such priests were held guilty of
felony.  Recusants were to be imprisoned until they should conform, and
if they remained obstinate for three months, they must be banished.

These penal laws, however, were rarely enforced.  They were kept as a
sword of Damocles, suspended over the heads of the unhappy Romanists,
and capable of being brought down on them at any moment.  In the hands
of an unscrupulous Minister of the Crown they might be made an agency of
considerable vexation: yet no reasonable remonstrance could be offered
to the reminder that these penalties were inflicted by law, and it was
only of the Queen's clemency that they had not been earlier exacted.  It
must also be admitted that the penal laws bore in reality much harder on
the Romanists than they seem to do in Protestant eyes.  To deprive a
Protestant of the services of a clergyman is at most to incommode him;
to deprive a Papist of his priest is equivalent in his eyes to depriving
him of his salvation.  To them, therefore, it was a matter of life and
death.  And yet, it must not be forgotten, they had brought it on
themselves.

With the death of Elizabeth came a serious change.  Revile her as they
might, under her the Romanists had been on the whole gently and justly
used.  But it was in reality, though they could not see it, after her
the deluge.

Who was to be Elizabeth's successor had been for years at once a serious
and an unsettled question.  There were three persons living when she
died, each of whom could have put forward a claim to the Crown on
various grounds.

Humanly speaking, the decision was made by two groups of persons--the
Careys and Cecils, and the Romanists of England--both of whom were
determined that James of Scotland should succeed.  The latter had been
working for some time past, and had secured promises from James that he
would extend special toleration to them.  He was expected to look kindly
on the party which had adhered to his mother--it would be difficult to
say why, since in Scotland his adherents had always been at war with
hers--and it was remembered that he had been born and baptised in the
Church of Rome.  The Roman party, therefore, wrought earnestly in his
favour.  Sir Thomas Tresham proclaimed him at Northampton, at
considerable personal risk; his sons and Lord Monteagle assisted the
Earl of Southampton to hold the Tower for James.  The Pope, Clement the
Eighth, was entirely on James's side, of whose conversion he entertained
the warmest hopes.  To the French Ambassador, Monsieur de Beaumont,
James asserted that "he was no heretic, that is, refusing to recognise
the truth; neither was he a Puritan, nor separated from the Church: he
held episcopacy as necessary, and the Pope as the chief bishop, namely,
the president and moderator of councils, but not the head nor superior."

We in this nineteenth century, accustomed to ideas of complete and
perpetual toleration, and alas! also to Gallio-like apathy and
indifference, can scarcely form a conception of what was at that time
the popular estimate of a Papist.  A fair view of it is given by the
following sarcastic description, written on the fly-leaf of a volume of
manuscript sermons of this date.

"The Blazon of a Papist [`priest' is erased] contrived prettily by som
Herault of Armes in ye compasse of Armoury.

"First.  There is papist Rampant, a furious beast: 'tis written that the
Diuell goes about like a roaring Lion, but the Diuell himselfe is not
more fierce and rigorous then is papist where [he] is of force and
ability to shew his tyranny: wittnes ye murthers, ye massacres, ye
slaughters, ye poysoning, ye stabbing, ye burning, ye broyling, ye
torturing, ye tormenting, ye persecuting, with other their bloody
executions, euery [sic] fresh in example, infinite to be told, and
horrible to be rememberd.

"Second.  A papist Passant: he's an instrument of sedition, of
insurrection, of treason, of Rebellion, a priest, a Jesuite, a seminary,
and such other as find so many friends in England and Ireland both to
receaue and harbour them, that it is to be feard we shall smart for it
one day.

"Third.  A papist Volant; of all the rest, these I take to do the least
harme: yet they will say they fly for their consciences, when its
apparently known they both practice and conspire.

"Fourth.  A papist Regardant; he obserus times, occasions, places, and
persons, and though he be one of the Popes intelligencers, yet he walks
with such circumspection and heed, that he is not known but to his own
faction.

"Fifth.  A papist Dormant: he's a sly companion, subtill as a fox: he
sleeps with open eyes, yet somtymes seeming to winke, he looks and pries
into opportunity, still feeding himselfe with those hopes that I am in
hope shall never do him good.

"Sixth.  A papist Couchant: this is a daungerous fellow, and much to be
feard; he creeps into the bosom of ye state, and will not stick to look
into ye Court, nay, if he can, into Court counsells: he will shew
himselfe tractable to ye co[mm]on wealthe prescriptions, and with this
shew of obedience to Law, he doth ye Pope more service then 20 others
that are more resisting.

"Seventh.  A papist Pendant: indeed a papist pendant is in his prime
p'fection: a papist pendant is so fitting a piece of Armoury for ye time
present, as all Herauds in England are not able better to display him: a
papist is then in chiefe when he is a Pendant, and he neuer comes to so
high p'ferment, but by ye Popes especiall blessing."  [Note 5.]

James's first act, when his succession was peaceably ensured, was to
remit the fines for recusancy.  For the first and second years of his
reign, they were not enforced at all.  The sum paid into the Exchequer
on this account, in the last year of Elizabeth, was 10,333 pounds; in
the first and second years of James it was about 300 and 200 pounds
respectively.  But in his third year, the fines were suddenly revived,
and the Romanists took alarm.  The King was evidently playing them
false.  He had been heard to say that "the Pope was the true
Antichrist," that "he would lose his crown and his life before he would
alter religion;" that "he never had any thought of granting toleration
to the Catholics, and that if he thought that his son would condescend
to any such course, he would wish the kingdom translated to his
daughter;" and lastly, that "he had given them a year of probation, to
conform themselves, which, seeing it had not wrought that effect, he had
fortified all the laws against them, and commanded them to be put in
execution to the uttermost."

Early in 1604, all Jesuits and seminary priests were banished; the
recusancy fines and arrears were soon after stringently exacted, and
many Roman Catholic families almost reduced to beggary.  Sudden
domiciliary visits were made in search of concealed priests, usually in
the dead of night: empty beds were examined, walls struck with mallets,
rapiers thrust into the chinks of wainscots.  The Jesuit missionaries
were in especial danger; they went about disguised, hid themselves under
secular callings and travelled from one house to another, using a
different name at each, to avoid discovery.  One priest, named Moatford,
passed as the footman of Lord Sandys' daughter, wore his livery, and
said mass in secret when it seemed safe to do so.  Serious difficulties
were thrown in the way of educating children; if they were sent abroad,
the parents were subject to a fine of 100 pounds; if taught at home by a
recusant tutor, both he and his employer were mulcted in forty shillings
per day.

It was in these circumstances that the Gunpowder Plot originated,--not
from some sudden ebullition of groundless malice: and it was due, not to
the Romanists at large, but to that section of them only which
constituted the Jesuit party.

It is not generally understood that the Roman Church, which boasts so
loudly of her perfect unity, is really divided in two parties, one
siding with, and the other against, that powerful and mysterious body
calling itself the Society of Jesus.  It is with this body, "the power
behind the Pope,"--which Popes have ere this striven to put down, and
have only fallen a sacrifice themselves--that political plots have most
commonly originated, and the Gunpowder Plot was no exception to the
general rule.  It was entirely got up by the Jesuit faction, the
ordinary Roman Catholics not merely having nothing to do with it, but
placing themselves, when interrogated, in positive opposition to it.

There are certain peculiarities concerning the conspirators which
distinguish this enterprise from others of its class.  They were mostly
young men; they _were_ nearly all connected by ties of blood or
marriage; two-thirds of them, if not more, were perverts from
Protestantism; and so far from being the vulgar, brutal miscreants
usually supposed, they were--with one exception--gentlemen of name and
family, and some of good fortune; educated and accomplished men, who
honestly believed themselves to be doing God service.  It is instructive
to read their profound conviction that they were saving their country's
honour, furthering their own salvation, and promoting the glory of God.
The slaughter of the innocents which necessarily attended their project
was lamentable indeed, but inevitable, and gave rise to as little real
compunction as the eating of beef and mutton.  These men were by no
means heartless; they were only blind from ignorance of Scripture, and
excess of zeal in a false cause.

The original propounder of the plot was unquestionably Robert Catesby,
of Ashby Saint Ledgers, a Northamptonshire gentleman of ancient ancestry
and fair estate.  He first whispered it in secret to John Wright, a
Lincolnshire squire, and soon afterwards to Thomas Winter, a younger
brother of the owner of Huddington Hall in Worcestershire, and a distant
cousin of an old friend of some of my readers--Edward Underhill, the
"Hot Gospeller."  Thomas Winter communicated it in Flanders to Guy
Fawkes, a young officer of Yorkshire birth, and these four met with a
fifth, Thomas Percy, cousin and steward of the Earl of Northumberland.
The object of the meeting was to consider the condition of the Roman
Catholics, with a view to taking action for its relief.  There was also
a priest in the company, but who he was did not transpire, though it is
almost certain to have been one of the three Jesuits chiefly concerned
in the plot--John Gerard, Oswald Greenway, or Henry Garnet.  Percy,
usually fertile in imagination and eager in action, was ready with a
proposition at once.  He said--

"The only way left for us is to kill the King; and that will I undertake
to do.  From him we looked for bread, and have received nought save
stones.  Let him be prayed to visit my Lord Mordaunt at Turvey, where a
masque may be had for him; and he once there, in the house of one of us
(though my Lord be not known so to be), he is at our mercy.  How say
you, gentlemen?"

"Nay, my son," replied the priest.  "There is a better course in hand--
even to cut up the very roots, and remove all impediments whatsoever."

"That were to run great risk and accomplish little," added Catesby.
"No, Tom: thou shalt not adventure thyself to so small purpose.  If thou
wilt be a traitor, I have in mine head a much further design than
that,--to greater advantage, and that can never be discovered."

Every body wished to know his meaning.

"I have bethought me," continued Catesby, "of a way at one instant to
deliver us from all our bonds, and without any foreign help to replant
again the Catholic religion.  In a word, it is to blow up the Parliament
House with gunpowder, for in that place have they done us all the
mischief, and perchance God hath designed that place for their
punishment."

"Truly, a strange proposal!" said Thomas Winter.  "The scandal would be
so great that the Catholic religion might sustain thereby."

"The nature of the disease requires so sharp a remedy," was Catesby's
reply.

"But were it lawful?" objected John Wright.  "Ask your ghostly father,"
said Catesby, who was pretty sure of the answer in that case.

"But remember," said Winter, "there are many of our friends and Catholic
brethren amongst the Lords: shall we destroy them with the rest?"

Catesby's answer was in principle that of Caiaphas.  "Ay: 'tis expedient
the few die for the good of the many."

The next step was to obtain a house convenient for their operations,--
namely, so close to the Houses of Parliament that they could carry a
mine from its cellar right under the House.  Percy was deputed to attend
to this matter, as his circumstances offered an excuse for his seeking
such a house.  He was one of the band of gentlemen pensioners, whose
duty it was to be in daily attendance on the King; a position into which
he had been smuggled by his cousin Lord Northumberland, without having
taken the oath requisite for _it_.  This oath Percy could not
conscientiously have taken, since by it he renounced the authority of
the Pope.  A little study of the topography induced him to fix on two
contiguous houses, which stood close to the House of Lords.  On
investigation, it was found that these two houses belonged to the
Parliament, and were held by Mr Wyniard, Keeper of the King's Wardrobe,
"an ancient and honest servant of Queen Elizabeth."  Both, however, had
been sub-let by him--the nearer to Mr Henry Ferris; the further to
Gideon Gibbons, a public porter, subsequently utilised by the plotters,
to his danger and discomfort.  Percy, therefore, in March, 1604, "began
to labour earnestly" with Mr Wyniard and his wife to obtain these
houses.  Mrs Wyniard seems chiefly to have attended to this business;
her husband was not improbably incapacitated by age or ill-health.
Percy's efforts proved successful.  He was accepted as tenant by the
Wyniards at a rent of 12 pounds per annum, Mr Ferris being bought out
with 30 pounds for his good-will and 5 pounds more "in consideration of
the charges of the house."  The agreement was signed on the 24th of May.

The next united act of these five exemplary gentlemen was to meet at a
house "in the fields behind Saint Clement's Church, near the arch, near
the well called Saint Clement's Well."  This seems to have been the
residence of the Jesuit priest Gerard; but it is uncertain whether it
was identical with that of Percy, or with that of Mrs Herbert, where
Fawkes had apartments, both which are also described as "beyond Saint
Clement's."  Gerard, who was in the company, was with delicate
consideration left in an upper room, where he was provided with all
necessaries for the celebration of mass, while the conspirators
proceeded to business alone in the lower apartment.  Taking a primer in
his hand, Catesby administered to his four accomplices this oath, which
he also took himself:--

"You swear by the blessed Trinity, and by the Sacrament which you now
propose to receive, never to disclose directly or indirectly, by word or
circumstance, the matter that shall be proposed to you to keep secret,
nor desist from the execution thereof till the rest shall give you
leave."

Then they passed into the upper room, where Gerard stood ready robed,
and received the host from his hands--with what "intention" being
unknown to him, if the assertion of the conspirators may be believed.

I have gone rather too far, chronologically speaking, in order to tell
this part of the story straight through; and now we must go back a
little.  About four months before this oath was taken, in January, 1604,
was held the famous conference of bishops at Hampton Court.  The King,
who, though baptised a Roman Catholic, had been educated as a
Presbyterian, propounded various queries to the hierarchy concerning
practices which puzzled him in the Church of England, of which he was
now the supreme head upon earth.  In the first place, he desired to know
the meaning of the rite of confirmation: "if they held the sacrament of
baptism invalidous without it, then was it in his judgment blasphemous;
yet if it were only that children might themselves profess and be
blessed, then very good."  The absolution of the Church he had heard
compared to the Pope's pardons.  Private baptism, he would have
administered only by a lawful minister; and concerning excommunications
he had also something to say.  On all these points the bishops fully
satisfied his Majesty, "whose exquisite expositions did breed wonder and
astonishment in that learned and noble audience."  Modern readers of the
proceedings have been much less inclined to astonishment, except indeed
that the bishops should have been so easily astonished.  On the second
day, a deputation was received from the Puritan ministers, who
petitioned for four points--which had they gained, the nineteenth
century would have found its burdens considerably lightened.  They
requested that the doctrine of the Church might be preserved pure,
according to God's Word; that good pastors might be planted in all
churches, to preach in the same; that the Book of Common Prayer might be
fitted to more increase of piety; and that Church government might be
sincerely ministered according to God's Word.

King James made the deputation explain themselves; and after a day's
debate, he angrily told them that they were aiming at a Scottish
presbytery, which agreed with monarchy as well as God and the Devil.
"No bishop, no king!" added his Majesty.  Some few members of the
Conference maintained that the Puritans had been crushed and insulted;
but Chancellor Egerton said he had never seen king and priest so fully
united in one person as in that of his sacred Majesty, and Bancroft
(afterwards Archbishop) fell upon his knees, unctuously exclaiming that
his heart melted for joy to think that England was blessed with such a
ruler.  The bishops and privy-councillors then conferred alone, altered
a few expressions in the Liturgy, and summoned the Puritans to hear
their decision.  Dr Raynolds, the Puritan spokesman, entreated that the
use of the surplice and the sign of the cross in baptism might be laid
aside, or at least not made compulsory, but the King sternly told him
that they preferred the credit of a few private men to the peace of the
Church; that he would have none of this arguing; "wherefore let them
conform, and quickly too, or they shall hear of it."  By this
short-sighted policy, the opportunity for really securing peace to the
Church was lost for sixty years, and many of the troubles of the next
reign were sown.  The next step was to arrest ten of the Puritan
leaders; and then to eject from their benefices three hundred clergy of
that school.  Among these was Mr Marshall, the pastor of our friends.
Lady Louvaine was sorely troubled.  She said they were now as sheep
without a shepherd, and were but too likely to have a shepherd set over
them who would fleece and devour the sheep.  Of these clergy some joined
the Presbyterians, some the Brownists--whom people now began to call
Independents: others remained in the Church, ceasing to minister, and
following such callings as they deemed not unbecoming the position of a
Christian minister--chiefly tutorship and literature.  Mr Marshall was
in the last class.  He said better times might come, and he could not
see his way to desert the Church, though her ways to him at this present
were somewhat step-motherly.

"But how, Mr Marshall, if the Church cast you forth?" asked Temperance.

"Then must I needs go," he answered with a smile.  "But that, look you,
were not my deed, nor should I be responsible for it before God.  So
long as I break not her laws, she hath no right to eject me; and so long
as she abideth in the truth, I have no right to desert her."

"But the bishops abide not in the truth, as I take it."

"The bishops be not the Church," replied he.  "Let the Articles and
Homilies be changed, with evil tendency, and then that is to change the
Church.  I go forth of her then at once; for she should be no longer the
Church of my faith, to which I sware obedience, and she hath not that
right over me to require me to change with her.  But so long as these
are left unaltered, what matter though bishops change?  They are not
immortal: and very sure am I they are not infallible."

"What think you, Mother?" said Edith.

"Children," replied Lady Louvaine, laying down her knitting in her lap,
"I can get no further at this present than one line of Saint John: `He
Himself knew what He would do.'  I do not know what He will do.  It may
be, as it then was, something that none of all His disciples can guess.
One step at a time is all He allows us to see, and all He bids us take.
`He calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out'; but also, `He
goeth before them.'  At times He leads them, I think, outside the fold;
and if He is outside, and we hear His voice, we must needs go to Him.
Yet is this rare, and we should make very sure that it is from without
we hear the familiar voice, and not rush forth in haste when He may be
calling from within.  Let us know that He is on the road before us, and
then we need have no fear to run fast, no doubt whither the road will
lead.  There be some sheep in such haste to run that they must needs go
past the Shepherd; and then have they no longer a leader, and are very
like to miss the right way."

"You have the right, Lady Louvaine," said Mr Marshall.  "`He that
believeth shall not make haste.'  Yet there be sheep--to follow your
imagery, or truly that of our Lord--that will lag behind, and never keep
pace with the Shepherd."

"Ay," she answered: "and I know not if that be not the commoner fault of
the twain.  He calls, and calls, and they come not; and such sheep find
many a sharp tap from the rod ere they will walk, never say run.  Our
Shepherd is human, therefore He can feel for us; He is Divine, therefore
can He have patience with us.  Let us thank God for both."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Except, only.  This, now a Northern provincialism, is an
archaism at least as old as the fourteenth century.

Note 2.  Nevertheless.  This strictly Lancastrian provincialism is
supposed to be a corruption of "choose how."  Its exact pronunciation
can hardly be put into English letters.

Note 3.  This was a revival; for "persille" is found on the Rolls of
Edward II.

Note 4.  This is the computation of Sir Edward Coke in his opening
speech at the trial of the Gunpowder conspirators.

Note 5.  The little manuscript volume wherein this is inscribed, which
is in my own possession, consists of sermons--not very legible, and
mostly very dry by the Rev. Thomas Stone, their dates ranging from 1622
to 1666, with a few occasional memoranda interspersed.



CHAPTER FOUR.

WE GET INTO BAD COMPANY.

  "Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the fly:
  "'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy."

One afternoon during that winter, as Lettice was coming down-stairs, her
sense of smell was all at once saluted by a strange odour, which did not
strike her as having any probable connection with Araby the blest, mixed
with slight curls of smoke suggestive of the idea that something was on
fire.  But before she had done more than wonder what might be the
matter, a sound reached her from below, arguing equal astonishment and
disapproval on the part of Aunt Temperance.

"Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham!" was the
ejaculation of that lady.  "Lad, art thou afire, or what ails thee?"

The answering laugh was in Aubrey's voice.  "Why, Aunt!" said he, "is
this the first time you did ever see a man to drink Uppowoc?"

"`Drink up a work!'" exclaimed she.  "What on earth--"

"Picielt," said he.

"Lettice, is that thou?" inquired Aunt Temperance.  "Call Charity
quickly, and bid her run for the apothecary: this boy's gone mad."

A ringing peal of laughter from Aubrey was the answer.  Lettice had come
far enough to see him now, and there he stood in the hall (his coat more
slashed and puffed than ever), and in his hand a long narrow tube of
silver, with a little bowl at the end, in which was something that sent
forth a great smoke and smell.

"Come, Aunt Temperance!" cried he.  "Every gentleman in the land,
well-nigh, doth now drink the Indian weed.  'Tis called uppovoc,
picielt, petum [whence comes petunia], or tobago, and is sold for its
weight in silver; men pick out their biggest shillings to lay against
it, and 'tis held a favour for a gentlewoman to fill the pipe for her
servant [suitor].  I have heard say some will spend three or four
hundred a year after this manner, drinking it even at the table; and
they that refuse be thought peevish and ill company."

"And whither must we flee to get quit of it?" quoth she grimly.

"That cannot I say, Aunt.  In France they have it, calling it Nicotine,
from one Nicot, that did first fetch it thither; 'twas one Ralph Lane
that brought it to England.  Why, what think you? there are over six
thousand shops in and about London, where they deal in it now."

"Six thousand shops for that stinking stuff!"

"Oh, not for this alone.  The apothecaries, grocers, and chandlers have
it, and in every tavern you shall find the pipe handed round, even
where, as in the meaner sort, it be made but of a walnut shell and a
straw.  Why, Aunt, 'tis wondrous wholesome and healing for divers
diseases."

"Let's hear which of them."

"Well--migraines [headaches], colics, toothache, ague, colds,
obstructions through wind, and fits of the mother [hysterics]; gout,
epilepsy, and hydropsy [dropsy].  The brain, look you, being naturally
cold and wet, all hot and dry things must be good for it."

"I'd as soon have any of those divers distempers as _that_," solemnly
announced Aunt Temperance.  "`Brain cold and wet!' when didst thou
handle thy brains, that thou shouldst know whether they be cold or not?"

"I do ensure you, Aunt, thus saith Dr Barclay, one of the first
physicians in London town, which useth this tobago for all these
diseases.  He only saith 'tis not to be touched with food, or after it,
but must be took fasting.  Moreover, it helps the digestion."

"It'll not help mine.  And prithee, Mr Aubrey Louvaine, which of all
this list of disorders hast thou?"

"I, Aunt?  Oh, I'm well enough."

"Dear heart!  When I am well enough, I warrant you, I take no physic."

"Oh, but, Aunt, 'tis not physic only.  'Tis rare comforting and
soothing."

Aunt Temperance's face was a sight to see.  She looked Aubrey over from
the crown of his head to his boots, till his face flushed red, though he
tried to laugh it away.

"Soothing!" said she in a long-drawn indescribable tone.  "Lettice,
prithee tell me what year we be now in?"

"In the year of our Lord 1603, Aunt," said Lettice, trying not to laugh.

"Nay," answered she, "that cannot be: for my nephew, Aubrey Louvaine,
was born in the year of our Lord 1583, and he is yet, poor babe, in the
cradle, and needs rocking and hushing a-by-bye.  S-o-o-t-h-i-n-g!" and
Aunt Temperance drew out the word in a long cry, for all the world like
a whining baby.  "Lad, if you desire not the finest thrashing ever you
had yet, cast down that drivelling folly of a silver toy, and turn up
your sleeves and go to work like a man!  When you lie abed ill of the
smallpox you may say you want soothing, and no sooner: and if I hear
such another word out of your mouth, I'll leather you while I can stand
over you."

Aunt Temperance marched to the parlour door, and flung it wide open.

"Madam," said she, "give me leave to introduce to your Ladyship the King
of Fools.  I go forth to buy a cradle for him, and Edith, prithee run to
the kitchen and dress him some pap.  He lacks soothing, Madam; and
having been brought so low as to seek it, poor fool, at the hands of the
evillest-smelling weed ever was plucked off a dunghill, I am moved to
crave your Ladyship's kindliness for him.  Here's his rattle,"--and Aunt
Temperance held forth the silver pipe,--"which lacks but the bells to be
as rare a fool's staff as I have seen of a summer day.--Get thee in,
thou poor dizard dolt!  [Note 1] to think that I should have to call
such a patch my cousin!"

Lady Louvaine sat, looking first at Aubrey and then at Temperance, as
though she marvelled what it all meant.  Edith said, laughingly--

"Why, Aubrey, what hast thou done, my boy, so to vex thine aunt?" and
Faith, throwing down her work, rose and came to Aubrey.

"My darling! my poor little boy!" she cried, as a nurse might to a
child; but Faith's blandishment was real, while Temperance's was
mockery.

All Aunt Temperance's mocking, nevertheless, provoked Aubrey less than
his mother's reality.  He flushed red again, and looked ready to weep,
had it been less unmanly.  Temperance took care not to lose her chance.

"Ay, poor little boy!" said she.  "Prithee, Faith, take him on thy lap
and cuddle him, and dandle him well, and sing him a song o' sixpence.
Oh, my little rogue, my pretty bird! well, then, it shall have a new
coral, it shall--Now, Madam, pray you look on this piece of wastry!
(Dear heart, but a fool and his money be soon parted!)  What think you
'tis like?"

"Truly, my dear, that cannot I say," replied Lady Louvaine, looking at
the pipe as Temperance held it out: "but either that or somewhat else,
it strikes me, hath a marvellous ill savour."

"Ill savour, Madam!" cried Temperance.  "Would you even such mean scents
as roses and lilies to this celestial odour?  Truly, this must it be the
angels put in their pouncet-boxes.  I am informed of my Lord of Tobago
here that all the gentlemen of the Court do use to perfume their velvets
with it."

"Well, I can tell you of two which so do," said Aubrey in a nettled
fashion--"my Lord of Northumberland and Sir Walter Raleigh: and you'll
not call them fools, Aunt Temperance."

"I'll give you a bit of advice, Mr Louvaine: and that is, not to lay
your week's wages out in wagers what I shall do.  I call any man fool
that is given to folly: and as to this filthy business, I should scarce
stick at the King's Majesty himself."

"Nay, the King is clean contrary thereto," saith Aubrey, with a rather
unwilling air: "I hear of my Lord that he saith it soils the inward
parts of men with oily soot, and is loathsome to the eye, hateful to the
nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, counted effeminate
among the Indians themselves, and by the Spanish slaves called sauce for
Lutheran curs."

"Well, on my word!" cried Aunt Temperance.  "And knowing this, thou
Lutheran cur, thou wilt yet soil thine inward parts with this oily
soot?"

"Oh, Aunt, every one so doth."

Lady Louvaine and Edith exchanged sorrowful looks, and the former said--

"Aubrey, my boy, no true man accounts that a worthy reason for his
deeds.  It was true of the Israelites when they fell to worship the
golden calf, and of the scribes and priests when they cried, `Crucify
Him!'  Hadst thou been in that crowd before Pontius Pilate, wouldst thou
have joined that cry?"

Edith went up to her mother, and said in a low voice, "May I tell him?"

Evidently it cost Lady Louvaine some pain to say "Yes," yet she said it.
Edith went back to her seat.

"Aubrey," she said, "four-and-twenty years gone, thine uncle, my brother
Walter, was what thou art now, in the very same office and household.
His wages were then sixteen pound by the year--"

"But mine are thirty-five, Aunt," responded Aubrey quickly, as though he
guessed what she was about to say.

"In order to be like every one else, Aubrey, and not come in bad odour
with his fellows, he spent well-nigh four hundred pound by the year,
and--"

"Uncle Walter!" cried Aubrey in amazement, and Lettice could have been
his echo.

"Ay!" said Edith, sadly.  "And for over ten years thereafter was my
father so crippled with his debts, that I mind it being a fine treat
when I and my sisters had a new gown apiece, though of the commonest
serge, and all but bare necessaries were cut off from our board.  Walter
laid it so to heart that of a spendthrift he became a miser.  I would
not have thee so to do, but I bid thee mind that we have very little to
live on, owing all we yet have, and have brought withal, to the goodness
of my dear Aunt Joyce; and if thou fall in such ways, Aubrey--"

"Dear heart, Aunt!  Think you I have no wit?"

"Thou hast not an ill wit, my lad," said Aunt Temperance, "if a wise man
had the keeping of it."

"Temperance, you are so unfeeling!" exclaimed Faith.  "Must I needs
stand up for my fatherless boy?"

"You'd ruin any lad you were mother to," answered her sister.

Hans now coming in, she set on him.

"Look here, Hans Floriszoon!  Didst ever see any thing like this?"

Hans smiled.  "Oh ay, Mistress Murthwaite, I have seen men to use them."

"Hast one of these fiddle-faddles thyself? or dost thou desire to have
one?"

"Neither, in good sooth," was his reply.

"There, Mr Louvaine! hearken, prithee."

"Hans is only a boy; I am a man," said Aubrey, loftily: though Hans was
but a year younger than himself.

"Lancaster and Derby! and are you then content, my Lord Man, that a
contemptible boy should have better wit than your magnifical self?
Truly, I think Hans was a man before thou hadst ended sucking of thy
thumb."

Just then Charity brought in the Rector.

"See you here, Mr Marshall!" cried Temperance, brandishing her pipe.
"Be you wont to solace your studies with this trumpery?"

Mr Marshall smiled.  "Truly, nay, Mistress Murthwaite; 'tis accounted
scandalous for divines to use that tobago, not to name the high cost
thereof."

"Pray you, how many pence by the ounce hath any man the face to ask for
this stinking stuff?"

"Three shillings or more, and that the poorest sort."

"Mercy me!  And can you tell me how folks use it that account it
physical?"

"Ay, I have heard tell that the manner of using it as physic is to fill
the patient's mouth with a ball of the leaves, when he must incline the
face downward, and keep his mouth open, not moving his tongue: then doth
it draw a flood of water from all parts of the body.  Some physicians
will not use it, saying it causeth over-quick digestion, and fills the
stomach full of crudities.  For a cold or headache the fumes of the pipe
only are taken.  His Majesty greatly loathes this new fashion, saying
that the smoke thereof resembles nothing so much as the Stygian fume of
the bottomless pit, and likewise that 'tis a branch of drunkenness,
which he terms the root of all sins."

Aubrey laughed rather significantly.

"Why," asked his mother, "is the King's Majesty somewhat given that
way?"

"Well, I have heard it said that when the King of Denmark was here,
their two Majesties went not to bed sober every night of the week:
marry, 'tis whispered all the Court ladies kept not so steady feet as
they might have done."

"Alack the day! not the Queen, I hope?"

"Nay, I heard no word touching her."

"Ah, friends!" said Mr Marshall with a sigh, "let me ensure you that
England's mourning is not yet over for Queen Elizabeth, and we may live
to lament our loss of her far sorer than now we do.  Folks say she was
something stingy with money, loving not to part with it sooner than she
saw good reason: but some folks will fling their money right and left
with no reason at all.  The present Court much affecteth masques, plays,
and such like, so that now there be twenty where her late Majesty would
see one."

"Mr Marshall," asked Edith, "is it true, as I have heard say, that King
James is somewhat Papistically given?"

"Ay and no," said he.  "He is not at all thus, in the signification of
obeying the Pope, or suffering himself to be ridden of priests: in no
wise.  But he hates a Puritan worse than a Papist.  Mind you not that in
his speech when he opened his first Parliament, he said that he did
acknowledge the Roman Church to be our mother Church, though defiled
with some infirmities and corruptions?"

"Yet he said also, if I err not, that he sucked in God's truth with his
nurse's milk."

"Ay.  But what one calls God's truth is not what an other doth.  All the
Papistry in the world is not in the Roman Church; and assuredly she is
in no sense our mother."

"Truly, I thought Saint Austin brought the Gospel hither from Rome."

"Saint Austin brought a deal from Rome beside the Gospel, and he was not
the first to bring that.  The Gallican Church had before him brought it
to Kent; and long ere that time had the ancient British Church been
evangelised from no sister Church at all, but right from the Holy Land
itself, and as her own unchanging voice did assert, by the beloved
Apostle Saint John."

"That heard I never afore," said Lady Louvaine, who seemed greatly
interested.  "Pray you, Mr Marshall, is this true?"

"I do ensure you it is," replied he; "that is, so far as the wit of man
at this distance of time may discern the same."

"Was the French Church, then, lesser corrupted than that of Rome?"
queried Edith.

"Certainly so," he said: "and it hath resisted the Pope's usurpations
nigh as much as our own Church of England.  I mean not in respect of the
Reformation, but rather the time before the Reformation, when our kings
were ever striving with the Pope concerning his right to appoint unto
dignities and livings.  Yet the Reformation itself began first in
France, and had they in authority been willing to aid it as in England,
France had been a Protestant country at this day."

That evening, as they sat round the fire, Hans astonished them all.

"Lady Lettice," said he, "were you willing that I should embark in
trade?"

"Hans, my dear boy!" was the astonished response.

"I will not do it without your good-will thereto," said he; "nor would I
at all have done it, could I have seen any better way.  But I feel that
I ought to be a-work on some matter, and not tarry a burden on your
hands: and all this time have I been essaying two matters--to look out
for a service, and to make a little money for you.  The second I have in
some sense accomplished, though not to the extent I did desire, and here
be the proceeds,"--and rising from his seat, Hans opened his purse, and
poured several gold pieces into his friend's lap.  "The former, howbeit,
is not--"

He was interrupted by a little cry from Lady Louvaine.

"Hans! thou surely thinkest not, dear lad, that I shall strip thee of
thy first earnings, won by hard work?"

"You will, Lady Lettice, without you mean to disappoint and dishearten
me very sore," he answered.

"But all this!" she exclaimed.

"'Tis much less than I would have had it; and it hath taken me
three-quarters of a year to scrape so much together.  But--nay, Lady
Lettice, forgive me, but never a penny will I take back.  You sure
forget that I owe all unto you.  What should have come of me but for you
and Sir Aubrey?  But I was about to say, I have essayed in every
direction to take service with a gentleman, and cannot compass it in any
wise.  So I see no other way but to go into trade."

"But, Hans, thou art a gentleman's son!"

"I am a King's son, Madam," said Hans with feeling: "and if I tarnish
not the escocheon of my heavenly birth by honest craft, then shall I
have no fear for that of mine earthly father."

"Yet if so were, dear lad--though I should be verily sorry to see thee
come down so low--yet bethink thee, thine apprenticeship may not be
compassed without a good payment in money."

"Your pardon, Madam.  There is one craftsman in London that is willing
to receive me without a penny.  Truly, I did nothing to demerit it,
since I did but catch up his little maid of two years, that could scarce
toddle, from being run over by an horse that had brake loose from the
rein.  Howbeit, it pleaseth him to think him under an obligation to me,
and his good wife likewise.  And having made inquiries diligently, I
find him to be a man of good repute, one that feareth God and dealeth
justly and kindly by men: also of his wife the neighbours speak well.
Seeing, then, all doors shut upon me save this one, whereat I may freely
enter, it seems to me, under your Ladyship's leave, that this is the way
which God hath prepared for me to walk in: yet if you refuse permission,
then I shall know that I have erred therein."

"Hans, I would give my best rebate Aubrey had one half thy wit and
goodness!" cried Temperance.

"I thank you for the compliment, Mistress Murthwaite," said Hans,
laughingly.  "But truly, as for my wit, I should be very ill-set to
spare half of it; and as for my goodness, I wish him far more of his
own."

"Where dwells this friend of thine, Hans?" inquired Lady Louvaine.
"What is his name? and what craft doth he follow?"

"He dwells near, Madam, in Broad Saint Giles'; his name, Andrew Leigh,
and is a silkman."

"We shall miss thee, my boy," said Edith.

"Mrs Edith, that was the only one point that made me to doubt if I
should take Master Leigh's offer or no.  If my personal service be of
more value to you than my maintenance is a burden, I pray you tell it
me: but if not--"

"We never yet reckoned thy maintenance a burden, my dear," answered Lady
Louvaine, lovingly.  "And indeed we shall miss thee more than a little.
Nevertheless, Hans, I think thou hast wisely judged.  There is thine own
future to look to: and though, in very deed, I am sorry that life offer
thee no fairer opening, yet the Lord wot best that which shall be best
for thee.  Ay, Hans: thou wilt do well to take the offer."

But there were tears in her eyes as she spoke.

The old feudal estimate was still strong in men's minds, by which the
most honourable of all callings was held to be domestic service; then,
trade and handicraft; and, lowest and meanest of all, those occupations
by which men were not fed, clothed, nor instructed, but merely amused.
Musicians, painters, poetasters, and above all, actors, were looked on
as the very dregs of mankind.  The views of the old Lollards, who held
that art, not having existed in Paradise, was a product of the serpent,
had descended to the Puritans in a modified form.  Was it surprising,
when on every side they saw the serpent pressing the arts and sciences
into his service?  It was only in the general chaos of the Restoration
that this estimate was reversed.  The view of the world at present is
exactly opposite: and the view taken by the Church is too often that of
the world.  Surely the dignity of labour is lost when men labour to
produce folly, and call it work.  There can be no greater waste either
of time, money, or toil, than to expend them on that which satisfieth
not.

When Hans came home, a day or two afterwards, he went straight to Lady
Louvaine and kissed her hand.

"Madam," said he, in a low voice of much satisfaction, "I bring good
news.  I have covenanted with Mr Leigh, who has most nobly granted me,
at my request, a rare favour unto a 'prentice--leave to come home when
the shop is closed, and to lie here, so long as I am every morrow at my
work by six of the clock.  I can yet do many little things that may save
you pain and toil, and I shall hear every even of your welfare."

"My dear lad, God bless thee!" replied Lady Louvaine, and laid her hand
upon his head.

Somewhat later in the evening came Aubrey, to whom all this concerning
Hans was news.

"Master Floriszoon, silkman, at the Black Boy in Holborn!" cried he,
laughingly.  "Pray you, my worthy Master, how much is the best velvet by
the yard? and is green stamyn now in fashion?  Whereto cometh galowne
lace the ounce?  Let us hear thee cry, `What do you lack?' that we, may
see if thou hast the true tone.  Hans Floriszoon, I thought thou hadst
more of the feeling of a gentleman in thee."

The blood flushed to Hans' forehead, yet he answered quietly enough.

"Can a gentleman not measure velvet? and what harm shall it work him to
know the cost of it?"

"That is a quibble," answered Aubrey, loftily.  "For any gentleman to
soil his fingers with craft is a blot on his escocheon, and that you
know as well as I."

"For any man, gentle or simple, to soil his fingers with sin, or his
tongue with falsehood, is a foul blot on his escocheon," replied Hans,
looking Aubrey in the face.

Once more the blood mounted to Aubrey's brow, and he answered with some
warmth, "What mean you?"

"I did but respond to your words.  Be mine other than truth?"

"Be not scurrilous, boy!" said Aubrey, angrily.

"Hans, I am astonished at you!" said Faith.  "I know not how it is, but
since we came to London, you are for ever picking quarrels with Aubrey,
and seeking occasion against him.  Are you envious of his better
fortune, or what is it moves you?"

It was a minute before Hans answered, and when he did so, his voice was
very quiet and low.

"I am sorry to have vexed you, Mrs Louvaine.  If I know myself, I do
not envy Aubrey at all; and indeed I desire to pick no quarrel with any
man, and him least of any."

Then, turning to Aubrey, he held out his hand.  "Forgive me, if I said
aught I should not."

Aubrey took the offered hand, much in the manner of an insulted monarch
to a penitent rebel.  Lettice glanced just then at her Aunt Edith, and
saw her gazing from one to the other of the two, with a perplexed and
possibly displeased look on her face, but whether it were with Aubrey or
with Hans, Lettice could not tell.  What made Aubrey so angry did not
appear.

Lettice's eyes went to her grandmother.  On her face was a very
sorrowful look, as if she perceived and recognised some miserable
possibility which she had known in the past, and now saw advancing with
distress.  But she did not speak either to Hans or Aubrey.

The full moon of a spring evening, almost as mild as summer, lighted up
the Strand, throwing into bold relief the figure of a young man,
fashionably dressed, who stood at the private door of a tailor's shop,
the signboard of which exhibited a very wild-looking object of human
species, clad in a loose frock, with bare legs and streaming hair, known
to the initiated as the sign of the Irish Boy.

Fashionably dressed meant a good deal at that date.  It implied a
doublet of velvet or satin, puffed and slashed exceedingly, and often
covered with costly embroidery or gold lace; trunk hose, padded to an
enormous width, matching the doublet in cost, and often in pattern;
light-coloured silk stockings, broad-toed shoes, with extremely high
heels, and silver buckles, or gold-edged shoe-strings; garters of broad
silk ribbons, often spangled with gold, and almost thick enough for
sashes; a low hat with a feather and silk hatband, the latter sometimes
studded with precious stones; a suspicion of stays in the region of the
waist, but too likely to be justified by fact; fringed and perfumed
gloves of thick white Spanish leather; lace ruffs about the neck and
wrists, the open ones of immense size, the small ones closer than in the
previous reign; ear-rings and love-locks: and over all, a gaudy cloak,
or rather cape, reaching little below the elbow.  In the youth's hand
was an article of the first necessity in the estimation of a gentleman
of fashion,--namely, a tobacco-box, in this instance of chased silver,
with a mirror in the lid, whereby its owner might assure himself that
his ruff sat correctly, and that his love-locks were not out of curl.  A
long slender cane was in the other hand, which the youth twirled with
busy idleness, as he carelessly hummed a song.

  "Let's cast away care, and merrily sing,
  For there's a time for every thing:
  He that plays at his work, and works at his play,
  Doth neither keep working nor holy day."

A second youth came down the street westwards, walking not with an air
of haste, but of one whose time was too valuable to be thrown away.  He
was rather shorter and younger than the first, and was very differently
attired.  He wore a fustian doublet, without either lace or embroidery;
a pair of unstuffed cloth hose, dark worsted stockings, shoes with
narrow toes and plain shoe-strings of black ribbon; a flat cap; cloth
gloves, unadorned and unscented, and a cloak of black cloth, of a more
rational length than the other.  As he came to the tailor's shop he
halted suddenly.

"Aubrey!"  The tone was one of surprise and pain.

"Spy!" was the angry response.

"I am no spy, and you know it.  But I would ask what you do here and
now?"

"Are you my gaoler, that I must needs give account to you?"

"I am your brother, Aubrey; and I, as well as you, am my brother's
keeper in so far as concerns his welfare.  It is over a month since you
visited us, and your mother and Lady Lettice believe you to be with your
Lord in Essex.  How come you hither, so late at night, and at another
door than your own?"

"No business of yours!  May a man not call to see his tailor?"

"Men do not commonly go to their tailors after shops be shut."

"Oh, of course, you wot all touching shop matters.  Be off to your
grograne and cambric!  I'm not your apprentice."

"My master's shop is shut with the rest.  Aubrey, I saw you last night--
though till now I tried to persuade myself it was not you--in Holborn,
leaving the door of the Green Dragon.  What do you there?"

The answer came blazing with wrath.

"You saw--you mean, sneaking, blackguardly traitor of a Dutch
shopkeeper!  I'll have no rascal spies dogging my steps, and--"

"Aubrey," said the quiet voice that made reply, "you know me better than
that.  I never played the spy on you yet, and I trust you will never
give me cause.  Yet what am I to think when as I pass along the street I
behold you standing at the door of a Pa--"

"Hold your tongue!"

The closing word was cut sharply in two by that fierce response.  It
might be a pavior, a pear-monger, or a Papist.  Hans was silent until
Aubrey had again spoken, which he did in a hard, constrained tone.

"I shall go where I please, without asking your leave or any body's
else!  I am of age, and I have been tied quite long enough to the
apron-strings of a parcel of women: but I mean not to cut myself loose
from them, only to pass under guidance of a silly lad that hath never a
spark of spirit in him, and would make an old woman of me if I gave him
leave."  Then, in a voice more like his own, he added, "Get you in to
your knitting, old Mistress Floriszoon, and tie your cap well o'er your
ears, lest the cold wind give you a rheum."

"I will go in when you come with me," said Hans calmly.

"I will not."

"To-night, Aubrey--only just to-night!"

"And what for to-night, prithee?  I have other business afloat.
To-morrow I will maybe look in."

Perhaps Aubrey was growing a little ashamed of his warmth, for his voice
had cooled down.

"We can never do right either to-morrow or yesterday," answered Hans.
"To-night is all we have at this present."

"I tell you I will not!"  The anger mounted again.  "I will not be at
the beck and call of a beggarly tradesfellow!"

"You love better to be at Satan's?"

"Take that for your impudence!"

There was the sound of a sharp, heavy blow--so heavy that the recipient
almost staggered under it.  Then came an instant's dead silence: and
then a voice, very low, very sorrowful, yet with no anger in it--

"Good-night, Aubrey.  I hope you will come to-morrow."

And Hans's steps died away in the distance.

Left to himself, Aubrey's feelings were far from enviable.  He was
compelled to recognise the folly of his conduct, as more calculated to
fan than deter suspicion; and it sorely nettled him also to perceive
that Hans, shopkeeper though he might be, had shown himself much the
truer gentleman of the two.  But little time was left him to indulge in
these unpleasant reflections, for the door behind him was opened by a
girl.

"Mr Catesby at home?"

"Ay, Sir, and Mr Winter is here.  Pray you, walk up."

Aubrey did as he was requested, adding an unnecessary compliment on the
good looks of the portress, to which she responded by a simper of
gratified vanity--thereby showing that neither belonged to the wisest
class of mankind--and he was ushered upstairs, into a small but pleasant
parlour, where three gentlemen sat conversing.  A decanter stood on the
table, half full of wine, and each gentleman was furnished with a glass.
The long silver pipe was passing round from one to another, and its
smoker looked up as Aubrey was announced.

"Ah! welcome, Mr Louvaine.  Mr Winter, you know this gentleman.  Sir,
this is my very good friend Mr Darcy,"--indicating the third person by
a motion of the hand.  "Mr Darcy, suffer me to make you acquainted with
Mr Louvaine, my good Lord Oxford's gentleman and a right pleasant
companion.--Pray you, help yourself to Rhenish, and take a pipe."

Aubrey accepted the double invitation, and was soon puffing at the pipe
which Catesby handed to him.

He had not taken much notice of the stranger, and none at all of a
gesture on the part of Mr Catesby as he introduced him--a momentary
stroking upwards of his forehead, intended as a sign not to Aubrey, but
to the other.  The stranger, however, perfectly understood it.  To him
it said, "Here is a simpleton: mind what you say."

Mr Catesby, the occupant of the furnished apartments, was a man of
unusually lofty height, being over six feet, and of slender build,
though well-proportioned; he had a handsome and expressive face, and,
while not eloquent, was possessed of the most fascinating and attractive
manners by which man ever dragged his fellow-man to evil.  Mr Winter,
on the other hand, was as short as his friend was tall.  His rather
handsome features were of the Grecian type, and he had the power of
infusing into them at will a look of the most touching child-like
innocence.  He spoke five, languages, and was a well-read man for his
time.

The stranger, to whom Aubrey had been introduced as Mr Darcy, was an
older man than either of the others.  Mr Catesby was aged thirty-two,
and Mr Winter about thirty-five; but Mr Darcy was at least fifty.  He
was a well-proportioned man, and dressed with studied plainness.  A
long, narrow face, with very large, heavy eyelids, and a long but not
hooked nose, were relieved by a moustache, and a beard square and
slightly forked in the midst.  This moustache hid a mouth which was the
characteristic feature of the face.  No physiognomist would have placed
the slightest confidence in the owner of that mouth.  It was at once
sanctimonious and unstable.  The manners of its possessor might be suave
or severe; his reputation might be excellent or execrable; but with that
mouth, a Pharisee and a hypocrite at heart he must be.  This gentleman
found it convenient not to be too invariably known by a single name, and
that whereby he had been introduced to Aubrey was one of five aliases--
his real one making a sixth.  Different persons, in various parts of the
country, were acquainted with him as Mr Mease, Mr Phillips, Mr
Farmer, and--his best-known alias--Mr Walley.  But his real name was
Henry Garnet, and he was a Jesuit priest.

To do justice to Aubrey Louvaine, who, though weak and foolish, being
mainly led astray by his own self-sufficiency, was far from being
deliberately wicked, it must be added that he entertained not the least
idea of the real characters of his new friends.  At the house of Mr
Thomas Rookwood, whither he was attracted by the fair Dorothy--who, had
he but known it, regarded him with cleverly concealed contempt--he had
made the acquaintance of Mr Ambrose Rookwood, the elder of the
brothers, and the owner of Coldham Hall.  This gentleman, to Aubrey's
taste, was not attractive; but by him he was introduced to Mr Percy,
and later, to Mr Thomas Winter, in whose society the foolish youth took
great pleasure.  For Mr Catesby he did not so much care; the fact being
that he was too clever to suit Aubrey's fancy.

Neither had Aubrey any conception of the use which was being made of him
by his new friends.  He was very useful; he had just brains enough, and
not too much, to serve their purpose.  It delighted Aubrey to air his
familiarity with the Court and nobility, and it was convenient to them
to know some one whom they could pump without his ever suspecting that
he was being pumped.  They often required information concerning the
movements and present whereabouts of various eminent persons; and
nothing was easier than to obtain it from Aubrey as they sat and smoked.
A few glasses of Rhenish wine, and a few ounces of tobacco, were well
worth expending for the purpose.

Aubrey's anger with Hans, therefore, was not based on any fear of
discovery, arising from suspicion of his associates.  He was only aiming
at independence, combined with a little secret unwillingness to
acknowledge his close connection with Mr Leigh's apprentice.  Of the
real end of the road on which he was journeying, he had not the least
idea.  Satan held out to him with a smile a fruit pleasant to the eyes
and good for food, saying, "Thou shalt be as a god," and Aubrey liked
the prospect, and accepted the apple.

Having enjoyed himself for about an hour in this manner, and--quite
unconsciously on his part--given some valuable information to his
associates, he bade them good evening, and returned to Lord Oxford's
mansion, in a state of the most delicately-balanced uncertainty whether
to appear or not at the White Bear on the following evening.  If only he
could know how much Hans would tell the ladies!

In the room which he had left, he formed for some minutes the subject of
conversation.

"Where picked you up that jewel?" asked Garnet of Winter.

"He lives--or rather his friends do--next door to Tom Rookwood,"
answered Winter.

"A pigeon worth plucking?" was the next question.

"As poor as a church-mouse, but he knows things we need to know, and in
point of wits he is a very pigeon.  He no more guesseth what time of day
it is with us than my Lord Secretary doth."

The trio laughed complacently, but a rather doubtful expression
succeeded that of amusement in Garnet's face.

"Now, good gentlemen, be quiet," said he, piously.  Was there a faint
twinkle in his eyes?  "God will do all for the best.  We must get it by
prayer at God's hands, in whose hands are the hearts of princes."

"You pray, by all means, and we'll work," said Catesby, removing the
pipe from his lips for an instant.

At that moment the door opened, and a fourth gentleman made his
appearance.  He was as tall and as handsome as Catesby; but the
considerable amount of white in his dark hair, and more slightly in his
broad beard, made him look older than his real age, which was forty-six.
He stooped a little in the shoulders.  His manners were usually gentle
and grave; but a pair of large and very lively eyes and an occasional
impulsive eagerness of speech, wherein he was ready and fluent at all
times, showed that there was more fire and life in his character than
appeared on the surface.  Those who knew him well were aware that his
temper was impetuous and precipitate, and on given occasions might be
termed quarrelsome without calumny.

"Shall we always talk, gentlemen, and never do anything?" demanded the
newcomer, without previous greeting.

"Come in, Mr Percy, and with a right good welcome!  The talk is
well-nigh at an end, and the doing beginneth."

"Our Lady be thanked!" was Percy's response.  "We have dallied and
delayed long enough.  This morning have I been with Mr Fawkes over the
house; and I tell you, the mining through that wall shall be no child's
play."

Winter lifted his eyebrows and pursed his lips.  Catesby only remarked,
"We must buy strong pickaxes, then," and resumed his puffing in the
calmest manner.

"The seventh of February, is it not, Parliament meets?"

"Ay.  I trust the Bulls will come from Rome before that."

"They will be here in time," said Garnet, rising.  "Well, I wish you
good-night, gentlemen.  'Tis time I was on my way to Wandsworth.  I lie
to-night at Mrs Anne's, whither she looks for her cousin Tresham to
come."

"My commendations to my cousins," said Catesby.  "Good-night.  We meet
at White Webbs on Tuesday."

"_Pax vobiscum_," said Garnet softly, as he left the room.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  All these are old terms signifying a fool or idiot.  Patch was
the favourite jester of Henry the Eighth, whose name was used as
synonymous with fool.



CHAPTER FIVE.

BEGINS WITH TEMPERANCE, AND ENDS WITH TREACHERY.

  "Whate'er we do, we all are doing this--
  Reaping the harvest of our yesterdays,
  Sowing for our to-morrows."

  S.V. Partridge.

On the following evening, Aubrey put in an appearance at the White Bear.
As soon as he entered, he gave a quick, troubled look round the
parlour, before he went up to kiss his grandmother's hand.  His Aunt
Temperance greeted him with, "Give you good even, my Lord Chamberlain!
Lancaster and Derby! do but look on him!  Blue feather in his hat--lace
ruff and ruffles--doublet of white satin with gold aglets--trunk hose o'
blue velvet, paned with silver taffeta--garters of blue and white silk--
and I vow, a pair o' white silken hose, and shoes o' Spanish leather.
Pray you, my Lord, is your allowance from the King's Majesty five
hundred pounds or a thousand by the year?"

"Now, Aunt, you know," said Aubrey, laughing.  "That thou art a
spendthrift?" answered she.  "Ay, I do: and if thou run not into debt
this side o' Christmas, my name is not Temperance Murthwaite."

"I'm not in debt a penny," retorted he.

"Then somebody must have given thee thy pantofles," replied she.  "Be
they a cast-off pair of his Majesty's, or did my Lord Oxford so much
alms to thee?"

Aubrey laughed again, as merrily as if he had not a care nor a fault in
the world.

"They cost not so much as you reckon," he said.

"Four yards of velvet," calculated Aunt Temperance--"you'll not do it
under, stuffed that wise of bombast, nor buy that quality, neither,
under eighteen shillings the yard--let's see,--that is three pounds
twelve shillings: silver taffeta, a yard and an half, twenty-two and
sixpence--that's four pounds fourteen and six; then the lining, dowlas,
I suppose, at fourteen pence--"

"They are lined with perpetuana, Aunt," answered Aubrey, who seemed
greatly amused by this reckoning.

"Perpetuana--_lining_?  Thou reckless knave!  Three-and-fourpence the
yard at the least--well, we'll say ten shillings--five pounds four and
six: and the lace, at four shillings by the ounce, and there'll be two
ounces there, good: five pounds twelve shillings and sixpence, as I'm a
living woman!  'Tis sinful waste, lad: that's what it is.  Your father
never wore such Babylonian raiment, nor your grandfather neither, and
there was ten times the wisdom and manliness in either of them that
there'll ever be in you, except you mean to turn your coat ere you are a
month elder."

As Aubrey turned to reply, his eyes fell on Hans, coming home from the
mercer's.  His face changed in a minute: but Hans came forward with his
hand held out as cordially as usual, and a look of real pleasure in his
eyes.

"Good even, Aubrey; I am glad to see you," said he.

"Ay, see him, do!" cried Temperance, before Aubrey could answer; and he
only gave his hand in silence.  "Look at him, Hans!  Didst ever behold
such a pair of pantofles?  Five pounds twelve shillings and sixpence!
How much cost thine?"

"Mine be not so brave as these," replied Hans, smiling.  "My Lord
Oxford's squire must needs wear better raiment than a silkman's
apprentice, Mrs Murthwaite."

"Five pounds twelve shillings and sixpence!" persisted she.

"Come, now, Aunt Temperance!  They cost not the half," said Aubrey.

"Who didst thou cheat out of them, then?" asked she.

"I bought them," he answered, laughing, "of a young noble that had borne
them but twice, and was ill content with the cut and colour of them."

"He'll come to no good," sternly pronounced Aunt Temperance.

"You made a good bargain," said Hans.  "That velvet cost full a pound
the yard, I should say."

"Aubrey," inquired Temperance, "I do marvel, and I would fain know, what
thou dost all the day long?  Doth thy Lord keep thee standing by his
chair, first o' one leg, and then o' tother, while he hath an errand for
thee?"

"Why, no, Aunt!  I am not an errand-lad," said Aubrey, and laughed more
merrily than ever.  "Of late is his Lordship greatly incommoded, and
hath kept his chamber during many days of this last month; but when he
hath his health, I will specify unto you what I do."

"Prithee specify, and I shall be fain to hearken."

"Well, of a morning I aid his Lordship at his _lever_, and after
breakfast I commonly ride with him, if it be my turn: then will he read
an hour or twain in the law, without the Parliament be sitting, when he
is much busied, being not only a morning man, but at committees also; in
the afternoon he is often at Court, or practising of music--just now he
exerciseth himself in broken music [the use of stringed instruments] and
brachigraphy [shorthand]: then in the evening we join my Lady and her
gentlewomen in the withdrawing chamber, and divers gestes and conceits
be used--such as singing, making of anagrams, guessing of riddles, and
so forth.  There is my day."

"Forsooth, and a useless one it is," commented she.  "The law-books and
the Parliament business seem the only decent things in it."

"Ah, 'tis full little changed," remarked Lady Louvaine, "these sixty
years since I dwelt at Surrey Place."  And she sighed.

"Temperance, I am astonished at you," interposed Faith.  "You do nought
save fault-find poor Aubrey."

"Poor Aubrey! ay, that he is," returned his Aunt, "and like to be a
sight poorer, for all that I can see.  If you'll fault-find him a bit
more, Faith, there'll not be so much left for me to do."

"What is the matter?" asked Edith, coming softly in.

"There's a pair of velvet pantofles and an other of silken hose the
matter, my dear," answered Temperance, "and a beaver hat with a brave
blue feather in it.  I trust you admire them as they deserve, and him
likewise that weareth them."

"They are brave, indeed," said Edith, in her quiet voice.  "I would fain
hope it is as fair within as without, my boy."

She looked up in his face as she spoke with yearning love in her eyes;
and as Aubrey bent his head to kiss her, he said, in the softest tone
which he had yet employed since his entrance, "I am afraid not, Aunt
Edith."

And Edith answered, in that low, tender voice--

"`Thy beauty was perfect through My comeliness which I had put upon
thee.'  Dear Aubrey, let us seek that."

Aubrey made no answer beyond a smile, and quickly turned the
conversation, on his mother asking if he brought any news.

"But little," said he.  "There be new laws against witchcraft, which is
grown greater and more used than of old, and the King is mightily set
against it--folks say he is afraid of it.  None should think, I ensure
you, how easily frightened is his Majesty, and of matters that should
never fright any save a child."

"But that is not news, Aubrey," said his mother plaintively.  "I want to
hear something new."

"There isn't an artichoke in the market this morrow," suddenly remarked
her sister.

"Temperance, what do you mean?"

"Why, that's news, isn't it?  I am sure you did not know it, till I told
you."

Mrs Louvaine closed her eyes with an air of deeply-tried forbearance.

"Come, lad, out with thy news," added Temperance.  "Wherewith hath my
Lady guarded her new spring gowns?  That shall serve, I reckon."

Aubrey laughed.  "I have not seen them yet, Aunt.  But I heard say of
one of the young gentlewomen that silk is now for the first to be woven
in England, so 'tis like to be cheaper than of old."

"There's a comfort!" said Mrs Louvaine, rather less languidly than
usual.

"I heard tell likewise of a fresh colewort, from Cyprus in the East--
they call it broccoli or kale-flower.  Methinks there is nought else,
without you would hear of a new fashion of building of churches, late
come up--but his Lordship saith 'tis a right ancient fashion, wherein
the old Greeks were wont to build their houses and temples."

"Methinks it scarce meet to go to the heathen for the pattern of a
church," said Lady Louvaine; "are not our old churches fair enough, and
suitable for their purpose?"

"In this new fashion he no chancels," said Aubrey.

"Well, and I should hold with that," cried Temperance: "they give rise
to vain superstitions.  If there be no mass, what lack we of a chancel?"

"If men list, my dear, to bring in the superstitions," quietly remarked
Lady Louvaine, "they shall scarce stick at the want of a chancel."

"True, Madam: yet would I fain make it as hard to bring them as ever I
could."

Aubrey left his friends about six o'clock, and Hans followed him to the
door.  On the steps there was a short, low-toned conversation.

"Hans, after all, thou art a good lad.  Did I hurt thee?"

"'Tis all o'er now, Aubrey: no matter."

"Then I did.  Well, I am sorry.  Shall I give thee a silver chain to
make up, old comrade?"

"All is made up.  Prithee, give me nothing--save--my brother Aubrey."

Aubrey's tone was glib and light, though with a slight sub-accent of
regret.  Hans's voice was more hesitating and husky.  It cost Hans much
to allow any one a glimpse into his heart; it cost Aubrey nothing.  But,
as is often the case, the guarded chamber contained rare treasure, while
in the open one there was nothing to guard.

"Thou art a good lad!" said Aubrey again, in a slightly ashamed tone, as
he took the offered hand.  "Truly, Hans, I was after none ill, only--
well, I hate to be watched and dogged, or aught like thereto."

"Who does not?" replied Hans.  "And in truth likewise, I was but coming
home, and spake my astonishment at seeing you."

"We are friends, then?"

"God forbid we should ever be any thing else!  Good-night, and God keep
you in His way!"

Not many days afterwards, an event happened, of some consequence to our
friends at the White Bear.  Their one powerful friend, Edward de Vere,
Earl of Oxford, died in June, 1604.

A strange study for a student of human nature is this Earl of Oxford--a
curious compound, like his late royal lady, of greatness and littleness.
He began life as a youthful exquisite.  His costumes were more
extravagant, his perfumes more choice, his Italian more pure and fluent,
than those of the other dilettante nobles of his time.  He was a minor
poet of some note in his day, and was esteemed to be the first writer of
comedy then living--though Shakespeare was living too.  In middle life
he blossomed out into a military patriot.  He ended his days as a hard,
cold, morose old man.  His life-lamp was used up: it had been made so to
flare in early youth, that there was no oil left to light him at the
end, when light and warmth were most needed.  Having quarrelled with his
father-in-law, the great Earl of Burleigh, he registered a savage and
senseless vow to "ruin his daughter," which he could do only by ruining
himself.  In pursuance of this insane resolution, he spent right and
left, until his estate was wrecked, and the innocent Countess Anne was
hunted into her grave.

The son who succeeded to his father's title, and to the few acres which
this mad folly had not flung away, was a mere boy of twelve years old.
It became a serious question in Lady Louvaine's mind whether Aubrey
should remain in the household after the decease of the old Earl.  She
found, however, that the widowed Countess Elizabeth kept a very orderly
house, and a strict hand over her son and his youthful companions, so
that Lady Louvaine, who saw no other door open, thought it best to leave
Aubrey where he was.  The Countess, who had been Maid of Honour to Queen
Elizabeth, had been well drilled by that redoubtable lady into proper
and submissive behaviour; and she now required similar good conduct from
her dependants, with excellent reasons for absence or dereliction from
duty.  That she was never deceived would be too much to say.

Meanwhile, matters progressed busily in the house by the river-side.
The conspirators took in a sixth accomplice--Christopher Wright, the
younger brother of John--and the six began their mine, about the
eleventh of December, 1604.

The wall of the House of Lords was three yards in thickness; the cellar
of Percy's house was extremely damp, being close to the river, and the
water continually oozed through into the mine.  Finding their task more
difficult than they had anticipated, a seventh was now taken into the
number--a pervert, Robert Keyes, the son of a Protestant clergyman in
Derbyshire.  A second house was hired at Lambeth, of which Keyes was
placed in charge, while to Fawkes was committed the chief business of
laying in the combustibles, first in the Lambeth house, and afterwards
of removing them to that at Westminster.  Fawkes went cautiously about
his business, purchasing his materials in various parts of the City, so
as not to excite suspicion.  He provided in all, three thousand billets
of wood, five hundred faggots, thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, with
stones and bars of iron, in order that the explosion might be more
destructive.  From the Bankside, or south bank of the Thames, where it
lay in hampers, twenty barrels of the powder was first brought in boats,
by night, to the house at Westminster, where it was stored in the cellar
to await the finishing of the mine.  By Christmas they had penetrated
the wall of Percy's house, and had reached that of the House of Lords.
They thought it desirable now to rest for the Christmas holidays; Keyes
was left in charge of the house at Lambeth, and the others departed in
various directions.

"Well, upon my word!  Prithee, good my master, who's your tailor?"

The speaker was Temperance Murthwaite, who was clad in the plainest of
brownish drab serges, without an unnecessary tag or scrap of fringe, and
carried on her arm an unmistakable market-basket, from which protruded
the legs of a couple of chickens and sundry fish-tails, notwithstanding
the clean cloth which should have hidden such ignoble articles from
public view.  The person addressed was Mr Aubrey Louvaine, and his
costume was a marvel of art and a feast of colour.

"My tailor is Adrian Sewell, Aunt, in Thieving Lane--"

"Like enough!" was the response.  "Well, Gentleman?"

"Shall I--" The words died on Aubrey's lips.  His aunt, who read his
thoughts exactly, stood wickedly enjoying the situation.

"Shall you carry the basket?  By all means, if it please your Highness.
Have a care, though, lest the tails of those whitings sully yon brave
crimson velvet, and see the fowls thrust not their talons into that
Spanish lace.  Methinks, Master Aubrey, considering your bravery of
array, you were best pocket your civility this morrow.  It'll be lesser
like to harm the lace and velvet than the chicks' legs and the
fish-tails.  You may keep me company an' you will, if I be good enough
to trudge alongside so fine a Whitsuntide show as you are.  That's two
of 'em."

"Of what, Aunt?" said Aubrey, feeling about as unhappy as a mixture of
humiliation and apprehension could make him.  If they were to meet one
of Lord Oxford's gentlemen, or one of his wealthy acquaintances, he felt
as though he should want the earth to open and swallow him.

"Suits, Gentleman," was the reply.  "Blue and white the first; crimson
and silver the second.  Haven't seen the green and gold yet, nor the
yellow, nor purple.  Suppose they're in the wardrobe.  Rather early
times, to be thus bedizened, or seems so to working folks--the Abbey
clock went eight but a few minutes since.  But quality is donned early,
I know."

As Mistress Temperance emitted this tingling small-shot of words, she
was marching with some rapidity up Old Palace Yard and the Abbey Close,
her magnificent nephew keeping pace with her, right sore against his
will.  At last Aubrey could bear no longer.  The windows of the Golden
Fish were in sight, and his soul was perturbed by a vision of the fair
Dorothy, who might be looking out, and whose eyes might light on the
jewel of himself in this extremely incongruous setting of Aunt
Temperance and the fish-tails.

"Aunt Temperance, couldn't--" Aubrey's words did not come so readily as
usual, that morning.

"Couldn't I walk slower?" suggested the aggravating person who was the
cause of his misery.  "Well, belike I could.--There's Mrs Gertrude up
at the window yonder--without 'tis Mrs Dorothy.--There's no hurry in
especial, only I hate to waste time."

And suiting the action to the word, Aunt Temperance checked her steps,
so as to give the young lady, whether it were Gertrude or Dorothy, a
more leisurely view of the fish-tails.

"Couldn't Rachel go marketing instead of you?" sputtered out Aubrey.

"Rachel has her own work; and so has Charity.  And so have I, Mr
Louvaine.  I suppose you haven't, as you seem to be gallivanting about
Westminster in crimson and silver at eight o'clock of a morning.  Now
then--"

"Aunt, 'tis not my turn this morrow to wait on my Lord's _lever_.  I
shall be at his _coucher_ this even."

"You may open the door, my master, if it demean not so fine a
gentleman.--Good maid!  Take my basket, Rachel.  The fish for dinner,
and the chicken for to-morrow."

"There's nobut four whitings here, Mistress: shouldn't there be five?"

"Hush thee, good maid.  They're twopence apiece."

"Eh, yo' never sen [say] so!"

"Ay, but I do.  Let be; I'll have a bit of green stuff, or something."

And as Rachel, looking but half satisfied, went off with the basket,
Temperance threw open the parlour door.

"Madam, suffer me to announce the Duke of Damask, the Prince of Plush,
the Viscount of Velvet, and the Baron of Bombast.  Pray you, look not
for four nobles; there is but one."

"Aubrey!" was the response, in diverse tones, from the three ladies.

The object of this attention did not look happy; but he walked in and
offered due greeting to his relatives.  Temperance sat down, untied her
plain black hood, and laid it aside.

"And whither might your Lordship be going when I captivated you?" asked
she.  "Not to this house, for you had passed it by."

"In good sooth, Aunt, I did not--I meant, indeed--I should maybe have
looked in," stammered the young man.

"Tell no lies, my lad, for thou dost it very ill," was Aunt Temperance's
most inconsiderate reply.

"You might come to see us oftener, I'm sure, Aubrey, if you would," said
his mother in a plaintive voice.  "It is hard, when I have only one
child, that he should never care to come.  I wish you had been a girl
like Lettice, and then we could have had some comfort out of you."

"My dear," said Aunt Temperance, "he is devoutly thankful he's not.  He
doesn't want to be tied at the aprons of a parcel of women, trust me.
Have you had your pipe of open-work, or what you are pleased to call it,
Gentleman, this morrow?  Only think of hanging that filthy stench about
those velvet fal-lals!  With whom spent you last even, lad?"

The question came so suddenly that Aubrey was startled into truth.
"With some friends of mine in the Strand, Aunt."  The next instant he
was sorry.

"Let's have their names," said Aunt Temperance.

"Well, Tom Rookwood was one."

"Folks generally put the best atop.  Hope _he_ wasn't the best.  Who
else?"

"Some gentlemen to whom Rookwood introduced me."

"I want their names," said the female examiner.

"Well--one of them is a Mr Winter."  Aubrey spoke with great
reluctance, as his aunt saw well.  He selected Winter's name as being
least uncommon of the group.  But he soon found that Destiny, in the
person of Aunt Temperance, did not mean to let him off so lightly as
this.

"What sort of an icicle is he?"

"He isn't an icicle at all, Aunt, but a very good fellow and right
pleasant company."

"Prithee bring him to see us.  Where lodgeth he?--is he a London man?"

"He is a Worcestershire gentleman, on a visit hither."

"Pass him.  Who else?"

"Well--a man named Darcy."

"A man, and _not_ a gentleman?  Whence comes he?"

"I don't know.  Scarcely a gentleman, seeing he deals in horses."

"Horses are good fellows enough, mostly: but folks who deal in horses
are apt to be worser,--why, can I never tell.  Is the horse-dealer
pleasant company belike?"

"Not so much to my liking as Mr Winter."

"I'm fain to hear it.  Who else?"

"There is a Mr Percy, kin to my Lord Northumberland."

Aunt Temperance drew in her breath with an inverted whistle.  "Lo, you
now, we are in select society!"

But Edith turned suddenly round.  "Aubrey, is he a true Protestant?"
She knew that Lord Northumberland was reckoned "the head of the
recusants."

"I really don't know, Aunt," replied Aubrey, to whom the idea had never
before occurred.  "I never heard him say aught whence I could guess it.
He is a very agreeable man."

"The more agreeable, maybe, the more dangerous.  My boy, do have a care!
`He that is not with Me is against Me.'"

"Oh, he's all right, I am sure," said Aubrey, carelessly.

"You seem sure on small grounds," said Aunt Temperance.  "Well, have we
made an end?--is he the last?"

"No, there is one other--Mr Catesby."

Aubrey had deliberately left Catesby to the last, yet he could not have
explained for what reason.  Lady Louvaine spoke for the first time.

"Catesby?--a Catesby of Ashby Ledgers?"

"I have not heard, further than that his home is in Northamptonshire,
and his mother the Lady Anne Catesby."

"I think it is.  They are a Popish family, or were, not many years ago.
Aubrey, come here."

The young man obeyed, in some surprise.  His gentle grandmother was not
wont to speak in tones of such stern determination as these.

"My boy!" she said, "I charge thee on my benison, and by the dear memory
of him from whom thou hast thy name, that thou endeavour thyself to
thine utmost to discover whether these men be Papists or no.  Ask not of
themselves--they may deceive thee; and a Papist oft counts deceit no
wrong when it is done in the interests of his Church.  Make my
compliments to my cousin, my Lady Oxford, and give her the names of
these gentlemen, and where they lodge; saying also that I do most
earnestly beseech that she will make inquiry by her chaplain, and give
me to know, how they stand concerned in this matter.  Aubrey, you know
not the danger of such friendship: I do.  Obey me, at your peril."

Never in his life had Aubrey heard such words from the usually soft,
sweet lips of the Lady Lettice.  He was thoroughly frightened, all the
more because the dangers to be feared were so vague and unknown.  A few
minutes before, he had been feeling vexed with his Aunt Temperance for
catechising him so strictly about his friends.  Now, this sensation had
quite given way before astonishment and vague apprehension.

"Yes, Madam, I will," he answered gravely.

And he meant it.  But--

What a number of excellent people, and what a multiplicity of good
deeds, there would be in this naughty world, if only that little
conjunction could be left out!

Aubrey quitted the White Bear with the full intention of carrying out
his grandmother's behest.  But not just now.  He must do it, of course,
before he saw her again.  Lady Oxford might take it into her head to pay
a visit to Lady Louvaine, in which case it would surely be discovered if
the question had not been passed on.  Of course it must be done: only,
not just now.  He might surely spend a few more pleasant evenings at
Winter's lodgings, before he set on foot those disagreeable inquiries
which might end in his being deprived of the pleasure.  Lady Oxford,
therefore, was not troubled that evening,--nor the next, nor indeed for
a goodly number to follow.  But within a week of his visit to the White
Bear, when the sharp edge of his grandmother's words had been a little
blunted by time, and the cares of other things had entered in, Aubrey
again made his way to the lodgings occupied by Winter at the sign of the
Duck, in the Strand, "hard by Temple Bar."

There were various reasons for this action.  In the first place, Aubrey
was entirely convinced that the judgment of a man of twenty-one was to
be preferred before that of a woman of seventy-seven.  Secondly, he
enjoyed Winter's society.  Thirdly, he liked Winter's tobacco.
Fourthly, he admired Betty, who usually let him in, and who, being even
more foolish than himself, was not at all averse to a few empty
compliments and a little frothy banter, which he was very ready to
bestow.  For Aubrey was not of that sterling metal of which his
grandfather had been made, "who loved one only and who clave to her,"
and to whom it would have been a moral impossibility to flirt with one
woman while he was making serious love to another.  Lastly, the society
of his friends had acquired an added zest by the probability of its
being a dangerous luxury.  He loved dearly to poise himself on the edge
of peril, though of course, like all who do so, he had not the slightest
intention of falling in.

On the evening in question, Betty made no appearance, and Aubrey was let
in by her mistress, a plain-featured middle-aged woman, on whom he had
no temptation to waste his perfumes.  He made his way up the stairs to
Winter's door, and his hand was on the latch when he heard Percy's
voice.

"Through by the seventh of February!  You'll be nothing of the sort."

"I cry you mercy.  I think we shall," answered Catesby.

Aubrey lifted the latch, and entered.

Four gentlemen sat round the fire--Winter and Catesby; Percy, whom
Aubrey knew, and in whose hand was the pipe; and a fourth, a tall, dark,
and rather fine-looking man, with brown hair, auburn beard, and a
moustache the ends of which curled upwards.

"Ha!  Mr Louvaine?  You are right welcome," said Winter, rising to
greet his young friend, while Percy took his pipe from his lips, and
offered it to the latter.  Nobody introduced the stranger, and Aubrey
took but little notice of him, especially as thenceforth he sat in
silence.  He might have paid more if he could have known that after
three hundred years had rolled by, and the names of all then known as
eminent men should have faded from common knowledge, the name of that
man should be fresh in the memory of every Englishman, and deeply
interesting to every English boy.  He was in the company of Guy Fawkes.

To appear as a nameless stranger, and indeed to appear at all as little
as possible, was Fawkes's policy at this moment.  He was just about to
present himself on the stage as John Johnson, "Mr Percy's man," and for
any persons in London to know him by his own name would be a serious
drawback, for it was to a great extent because he was unknown in Town
that he had been selected to play this part.  Yet matters were not quite
ready for the assumption of his new character.  He therefore sat silent,
and was not introduced.

They smoked, sipped Rhenish wine, and chatted on indifferent subjects,
for an hour or more; discussed the "sleeping preacher," Richard Haydock,
then just rising into notoriety--who professed to deliver his sermons in
his sleep, and was afterwards discovered to be an imposter; the last
benefaction in the parish church, for two poor Irish gentlewomen on
their journey home, recommended by letters from the Council; the last
new ballad.

"But have you beheld," asked Winter, when these topics were exhausted,
"the King's new caroche of the German fashion, with a roof to fall
asunder at his Majesty's pleasure?"

"I have," said Catesby; "and methinks it shall take with many,
gentlewomen more in especial."

"Wherefore, now?" inquired Percy, laughing.  "Think you gentlewomen lack
air rather than gentlemen, or that they shall think better to show their
dainty array and their fair faces?"

"A little of both," was the answer.

"There is truly great increase in coaches of late years," remarked
Winter.

"Why, the saddlers are crying out they are like to be ruined," said
Percy; "the roads are cloyed and pestered, and the horses lamed."

"Ay, and that is not the worst of it," added Catesby.  "Evil-disposed
persons, who dare not show themselves openly for fear of correction,
shadow and securely convey themselves in coaches, and so are not to be
distinguished from persons of honour."

The whole company agreed that this was extremely shocking, and piously
denounced all evil-disposed persons in a style which Aubrey thought most
edifying.  As he walked back later, he meditated whether he should make
those inquiries of Lady Oxford that night, and decided not to do so.  No
real Papist or traitor, thought the innocent youth, would be likely to
denounce evil-disposed persons!  The airs they had been singing, before
parting, recurred to his mind, and he hummed fragments of them as he
went along.  "Row well, ye mariners", "All in a garden green", "Phillida
flouts me," and the catch of "Whoop, Barnaby!" finishing up with
"Greensleeves" and one or two madrigals--these had been their evening
entertainment: but madrigals were becoming unfashionable, and were not
heard now so often as formerly.  The music of Elizabeth's day, which was
mainly harmony with little melody, containing "scarcely any tune that
the uncultivated ear could carry away," was giving way to a less learned
but more melodious style.  Along with this, there was a rapid increase
in the cultivation of instrumental music, while vocal music continued to
be exceedingly popular.  It was usual enough for tradesmen and artisans
to take part in autiphons, glees, and part-songs of all kinds, while
ballads were in such general favour that ballad-mongers could earn
twenty shillings a day.  A bass viol generally hung in a drawing-room
for the visitors to play; but the few ladies who used this instrument
were thought masculine.  The education of girls at this time admitted of
scarcely any accomplishment but music: they were taught to read, write,
sew, and cook, to play the virginals, lute, and cithern, and to read
prick-song at sight,--namely, to sing from the score, without
accompaniment.  Those who were acquainted with any language beside their
own were the few and highly-cultured; and a girl who knew French or
Italian was still more certain to have learned Latin, if not Greek.
German and Spanish were scarcely ever taught; indeed, the former was
regarded as quite outside the list of learnable tongues.

It was a sore trouble to Aubrey that the White Bear and the Golden Fish
were next door to each other.  Had he had the ordering of their
topography, they would have been so situated that he could have dropped
into the latter, to sun himself in the eyes of the fair Dorothy, without
the least fear of being seen from the former.  He stood in wholesome
fear of his Aunt Temperance's sharp speeches, and had a less wholesome,
because more selfish, dislike of his mother's ceaseless complaints.
Moreover, Aunt Edith was wont to disturb his equanimity by a few quiet
occasional words wh

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