ther, the prospect before the Marshalls was not
pleasant. Rent was due, and clothes were needed, and money was
exceedingly scanty.

In the outside world, too, the sky was dull and gloomy. The Puritans
were in no greater favour than they had been, though the Papists were at
the lowest ebb. That there was any inconsistency in their conduct did
not apparently occur to the authorities, nor that the true way to
repress Popery was by cultivating Puritanism. Believing the true
principles of the Church of England to be the golden mean between the
two, they acted under the pleasing illusion that when both halves were
cut off, the middle would be left intact, and all the better for the
operation.

As Mr Marshall walked on in the Tottenham road, he saw a figure seated
on the grassy bank at some distance before him. When he came nearer, he
perceived that it was a young man, who sat with his head cast down, in
an attitude of meditation, and a light cane in his hand, with which now
and then he switched off the head of an unoffending dandelion. Drawing
nearer still, the minister began to suspect that the youth's face was
not unfamiliar; and when he came close, instead of passing the sitter on
the bank, he stepped down, and took a seat beside him.

The youth had paid no apparent attention to his companion until that
moment. His face was turned away northward, and only when Mr Marshall
sat down close to him did he seem to perceive that he was not alone.

"How goes the world with you this afternoon, Mr Louvaine?"

"Mr Marshall! I ask your pardon. I had not seen you."

"I thought not. You have taken a long walk."

Aubrey made no reply.

"Now, how am I to get at this shut-up heart?" said Mr Marshall to
himself. "To say the wrong thing just now may do considerable harm.
Yet what is the right one?" Aloud he said only,--"I hope my Lady
Lettice is well? I know not whether you or I saw her last."

"I have not seen her for months," said Aubrey, curtly.

"Then I am happier than you, for I saw her three weeks since. I thought
her looking somewhat frail and feeble, even more so than her wont; yet
very ripe for Heaven, when as it shall please God to take her."

There was no answer again. Aubrey's cane applied itself diligently to
making a plantain leaf lie to the right of its neighbour instead of the
_left_.

"Mr Louvaine, did you ever hear that my mother and your grandfather
were friends of old time?"

For the first t