England, ye little know the
dangers of life in lands where Popish priests rule, nor the miseries
that you will have to endure if they ever gain the ascendancy here
again!

Roger Hall had never heard Dr Abernethy's wise advice--"When you don't
know what to do, do nothing." But in this emergency he acted on that
principle.

"I trust, my dear heart," he said quietly, "that it may please the Lord
to make thee and this young gentlewoman a blessing to each other."

"Oh, it will, I know, Father!" said Christie, quite unsuspicious of the
course of her father's thoughts. "Only think, Father! she told me first
thing, pretty nigh, that she loved the Lord Jesus, and wanted to be like
Him. So you see we couldn't do each other any hurt, could we?"

Roger smiled rather sadly.

"I am scarce so sure of that, my Christie. Satan can set snares even
for them that love the Lord; but 'tis true, they be not so like to slip
as they that do not. Is this young mistress she that dwelt away from
home some years back, or no?"

"She is, Father; she hath dwelt away in the shires, with her
grandmother, these five years. And there was a good man there--she told
me not his name--that gave her counsel, and he said, `To do God's work
is to do God's will.' That is good, Father, isn't it?"

"Good, and very true, sweeting."

Roger Hall had naturally all the contempt of a trueborn man of Kent for
the dwellers in "the shires," which practically meant everybody in
England who was not a native of Kent. But he knew that God had said,
"He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth;" so he said in his heart, "Get
thee behind me, Satan," to the bad feeling, and went on to wonder who
the good man might be. Had Pandora told the name of that man, half
Roger's doubts and terrors would have taken flight. The name of Master
John Bradford of Manchester--the martyr who eighteen months before had
glorified the Lord in the fires--would have been an immediate passport
to his confidence. But Pandora knew the danger of saying more than was
needful, and silently suppressed the name of her good counsellor.

Some days elapsed before Roger was again able to visit Canterbury. They
were very busy just then at the cloth-works, and his constant presence
was required. But when February began, the pressure was past, and on
the first holy-day in that month, which was Candlemas Day, he rode to
the metropolitan city of his county on another visit to Alice. On his
arm he ca