ooking a bit pale and poorly this last week or
so? But mayhap you have not seen her, not of late."

"I have not, but I am now on my way," answered Mr Marshall, turning
into the White Bear, in the hope of escaping Silence's tongue. It was
the first word he had been able to cast into the stream she poured
forth.

"Well, maybe you'll drop a word to her touching Master Floriszoon? Dear
heart, what queer names them foreign folks do get! I never could abide
no foreigners, and if I--Bless us, the man's off--there's no having a
word with him. I say, Charity, I don't believe them eggs you had of
that--"

"You'll excuse me, Mistress Abbott, but I've no time to waste i' talk.
`The talk of the lips tendeth only to penury,'--and if you'll go in and
look for that i' th' Good Book, it'll happen do you a bit o' good--more
than talking. Good even."

And Charity shut the door uncompromisingly.

Mr Marshall was too much at home in the White Bear to need
announcement. He tapped softly at the parlour door, and opened it.
"Mrs Gertrude, I don't care who saith it! it's a wicked heresy!" were
the first words he heard, in the blunt tones of Temperance Murthwaite.
"And it's not true to say we Puritans teach any such thing. It's a
calumny and a heresy both.--Mr Marshall, I'm fain to see you. Do, pray
you, tell this young gentlewoman we hold not that if a man but believe
in the merits of Christ, he may live as he list, and look for Heaven in
the end. 'Tis a calumny, I say--a wicked calumny!"

"A calumny as old as the Apostle James, Mrs Murthwaite," answered Mr
Marshall, as he turned from greeting Lady Louvaine. "Some in those days
had, it should seem, been abusing Paul's doctrine of justification by
faith, and said that a man need but believe, and not live according
thereto."

"Why, Mr Marshall, I have heard you to say a man may believe and be
saved!" cried Gertrude, who sat on a velvet-covered stool beside Lady
Louvaine, having run in from the next door without hood or scarf.

"That I doubt not, Mrs Gertrude, and yet may, since you have heard
Paul, and John, and the Lord Himself, to say it in the Word. But,
believe what? Believe that a man once lived whose name was Jesus, and
who was marvellous good, and wrought many great works? That faith shall
not save you,--no more than believing in King James's Majesty should.
It is a living faith you must have, and that is a dead."

"Mr Marshall, I thought Puritans made much of the