R T. WILSON, 1554.

The two brothers, Humphrey and George Ratcliffe, left Mary Gifford and Lucy
at the gate of Ford Place.

From a barn came the sound of voices singing a psalm, in not very musical
tones.

Mistress Forrester was engaging in a Puritan service with a few of the
chosen ones, who would not join in what they deemed the Popish ceremonies
of the church in the valley. These stern dissenters from the reformed
religion were keeping alive that spark which, fanned into a flame some
fifty years later, was to sweep through the land and devastate churches,
and destroy every outward sign in crucifix, and pictured saint in fair
carved niche, and image of seer or king, which were in their eyes the token
of that Babylon which was answerable for the blood of the faithful
witnesses for Christ!

The stern creed of the followers of Calvin had a charm for natures like
Mistress Forrester, who, secure in her own salvation, could afford to look
down on those outside the groove in which she walked; and with neither
imagination nor any love of the beautiful, she felt a gruesome satisfaction
in what was ugly in her own dress and appearance, and a contempt for others
who had eyes to see the beauty to which she was blind.

Lucy had come home in a very captious mood, and declaring she was weary and
had a pain in her head; she said she needed no supper, and went up to her
little attic chamber in the roof of the house.

Mary Gifford laid aside her long veil, and made a bowl of milk and brown
bread ready for her boy; and then, while he ate it, pausing between every
spoonful to ask his mother some question, she prepared the board for the
guests, whom she knew her stepmother would probably bring in from the barn
when the long prayer was over.

Ambrose was always full of inquiries on many subjects, and this evening he
had much to say about the picture-book Master Tom Sidney showed him--the
man in the lions' den, and why they did not eat him up; the men in a big
fire that were not burned, because God kept them safe. And then he returned
to the hawk and the little bird, and wondered how many more the cruel hawk
had eaten for his supper; and, finally, wished God would take care of the
little birds, and let the hawk live on mice like the old white owl in the
barn. The child's prattle was not heeded as much as sometimes, and Mary's
answers were not so satisfactory as usual. He was like his Aunt Lucy,
tired, and scarcely as much pleased w