hadows of the room at the far end, away from the long,
mullioned window. "I have ever maintained that our Mother the Holy
Church is a far more merciful and gentle and tolerant mother than
those who seek to uphold her authority, and who use her name as a
cloak for much maliciousness and much ignorance."

Clarke turned swiftly upon the speaker, whose white head could be
plainly distinguished in the shadows of the panelled room. The
features, too, being finely cut, and of a clear, pallid tint, stood
out against the dark leather of the chair in which the speaker sat.
He was habited, although in his own house, in the academic gown to
which his long residence in Oxford had accustomed him. But it was
as a Doctor of the Faculty of Medicine that he had distinguished
himself; and although of late years he had done little in
practising amongst the sick, and spent his time mainly in the study
of his beloved Greek authors, yet his skill as a physician was held
in high repute, and there were many among the heads of colleges
who, when illness threatened them, invariably besought the help of
Dr. Langton in preference to that of any other leech in the place.
Moreover, there were many poor scholars and students, as well as
indigent townsfolk, who had good cause to bless his name; whilst
the faces of his two beautiful daughters were well known in many a
crowded lane and alley of the city, and they often went by the
sobriquet of "The two saints of Oxford."

This was in part, perhaps, due to their names. They were twin
girls, the only children of Dr. Langton, whose wife had died within
a year of their birth. He had called the one Frideswyde, after the
patron saint of Oxford, at whose shrine so many reputed miracles
had been wrought; and the other he named Magdalen, possibly because
he had been married in the church of St. Mary Magdalen, just
without the North Gate.

To their friends the twin sisters were known as Freda and Magda,
and they lived with their father in a quaint riverside house by
Miltham Bridge, where it crossed the Cherwell. This house was a
fragment of some ecclesiastical building now no longer in
existence, and although not extensive, was ample enough for the
needs of a small household, whilst the old garden and fish ponds,
the nut walk and sunny green lawn with its ancient sundial, were a
constant delight to the two girls, who were proud of the flowers
they could grow through the summer months, and were wont to declare