ere were no
Dissenters--except the few who remained Romanists; and perhaps there
were not likely to be many, when the fine for non-attendance at the
parish church was twenty pounds per month. Parochial relief was
unknown, and any old woman obnoxious to her neighbours was likely to be
drowned as a witch. Lastly, by the Bull of excommunication of Pope Pius
the Fifth, issued in April, 1569, Queen Elizabeth had been solemnly "cut
off from the unity of Christ's Body," and "deprived of her pretended
right to the Crown of England," while all who obeyed or upheld her were
placed under a terrible curse. [Note 2.]

Nineteen years had passed since that triumphant 17th of November which
had seen all England in a frenzy of joy on the accession of Elizabeth
Tudor. They were at most very young men and women who could not
remember the terrible days of Mary, and the glad welcome given to her
sister. Still warm at the heart of England lay the memory of the Marian
martyrs; still deep and strong in her was hatred of every shadow of
Popery. The petition had not yet been erased from the Litany--why
should it ever have been?--"From the Bishop of Rome and all his
enormities, good Lord, deliver us!"

On the particular afternoon whereon the story opens, one of the
dreariest points of the landscape was the house towards which Hal
Dockett's steps were bent. It was of moderate size, and might have been
very comfortable if somebody had taken pains to make it so. But it
looked as if the pains had not been taken. Half the windows were
covered by shutters; the wainscot was sadly in want of a fresh coat of
paint; the woodbine, which should have been trained up beside the porch,
hung wearily down, as if it were tired of trying to climb when nobody
helped it; the very ivy was ragged and dusty. The doors shut with that
hollow sound peculiar to empty uncurtained rooms, and groaned, as they
opened, over the scarcity of oil. And if the spectator had passed
inside, he would have seen that out of the whole house, only four rooms
were inhabited beside the kitchen and its dependencies. In all the
rest, the dusty furniture was falling to pieces from long neglect, and
the spiders carried on their factories at their own pleasure.

One of these four rooms, a long, narrow chamber, on the upper floor,
gave signs of having been inhabited very recently. On the square table
lay a quantity of coarse needlework, which somebody seemed to have
bundled together