e Queen and all the
grand nobles and ladies do the same, so I've heard, at Court.'

'I tell you,' was the reply, 'it's the old Popish custom--mass in the
morning, and feasting and revelling all the rest of the day. I tell you, it
is these licences which make the Nonconformists our bitter foes.'

'Foes!' the other said. 'Ay, there's a pack of 'em all round. Some seen,
some unseen--Papists and Puritans--but, thank the stars, I care not a groat
for either. I am contented, any way. Saint or sinner, Puritan or Papist, I
say, let 'em alone, if they'll let me alone.'

'Ay, there's the rub,' said the other, 'there's no letting alone. You and I
may live to see the fires kindled again, and burn ourselves, for that
matter.'

[Illustration: OLD HOUSES BY THE LYCH GATE, PENSHURST.]

'I sha'n't burn. I know a way out of that. I watch the tide, and turn my
craft to sail along with it.'

And this easy-going time-server, of whom there are a good many descendants
in the present day, laughed a careless laugh, and then, as the sound of
horses' feet was heard, and that of the crowd drawing near, he
good-naturedly lifted Ambrose on his shoulder, and, planting his broad back
against the trunk of the great overshadowing elm, he told the boy to sit
steady, and he would carry him to the wall skirting the field, where he
could see all that was going on.

Mary Gifford followed, and, feeling Ambrose was safe, was glad he should be
gratified with so little trouble and risk. She rested herself on a large
stone by the wall, Ambrose standing above her, held there by the strong arm
of the man who had befriended them.

The tilt was not very exciting, for many of the best horses and men had
been called into requisition by the gentry of the neighbourhood, for the
far grander and more important show to come off at Whitehall in the
following week.

The spectators, however, seemed well satisfied, to judge by their huzzas
and cheers which hailed the victor in every passage of arms--cheers in
which little Ambrose, from his vantage ground, heartily joined.

At last it was over, and the throng came out of the field, the victor
bearing on the point of his tilting pole a crown made of gilded leaves,
which was a good deal battered, and had been competed for by these village
knights on several former occasions.

Like the challenge cups and shields of a later time, these trophies were
held as the property of the conqueror, till, perhaps, at a future trial,