urnace purifieth the gold," said Mrs Tremayne sadly: "yet the
heat is none the less fierce for that, Robin."

"Dear heart, whether wouldst thou miss the suffering rather, and the
purifying, or take both together?"

"It is soon over, Thekla," said her mother, quietly.

During the fierce heat of the Marian persecution, those words had once
been said to Marguerite Rose. She had failed to realise them then. The
lesson was learned now--thirty-five years later.

"Soon over, to look back, dear Mother," replied Mrs Tremayne. "Yet it
never seems short to them that be in the furnace."

Mrs Rose turned rather suddenly to her son-in-law.

"Robin, tell me, if thou couldst have seen thy life laid out before thee
on a map, and it had been put to thy choice to bear the Little Ease, or
to leave go,--tell me what thou hadst chosen?"

For Mr Tremayne had spent several months in that horrible funnel-shaped
prison, aptly termed Little Ease, and had but just escaped from it with
life. He paused a moment, and his face grew very thoughtful.

"I think, Mother," he said at length, "that I had chosen to go through
with it. I learned lessons in Little Ease that, if I had lacked now, I
had been sorely wanting to my people; and--speaking as a man--that
perchance I could have learned nowhere else."

"Childre," responded the aged mother, "it seemeth me, that of all matter
we have need to learn, the last and hardest is to give God leave to
choose for us. At least, thus it hath been with me; it may be I mistake
to say it is for all. Yet I am sure he is the happy man that learneth
it soon. It hath taken me well-nigh eighty years. Thou art better,
Robin, to have learned it in fifty."

"I count, Mother, we learn not all lessons in the same order," said the
Rector, smiling, "though there be many lessons we must all learn. 'Tis
not like to be my last,--without I should die to-morrow--if I have
learned it thoroughly now. And 'tis easier to leave in God's hands,
some choices than other."

Mrs Rose did not ask of what he was thinking, but she could guess
pretty well. It would be harder to lose his Thekla now, than if he had
come out of Little Ease and had found her dead: harder to lose Arthur in
his early manhood, than to have seen him coffined with his baby brother
and sisters, years ago. Mrs Tremayne drew a long sigh, as if she had
guessed it too.

"It would be easier to leave all things to God's choice," she said, "if
only we dwelt