r ideas of the difference
between right and wrong, in short, that he was not a man to be trifled
with, and less still one of whom he could make a tool. Having
ascertained these things he left him alone as much as possible.

Mr. Knight very soon became aware first that his income was
insufficient to his needs, and secondly, especially now when his health
was much improved, that after a busy and hard-working life, time at
Monk's Acre hung heavily upon his hands. The latter trouble to some
extent he palliated by beginning the great work that he had planned
ever since he became a deacon, for which his undoubted scholarship gave
him certain qualifications. Its provisional title was, "Babylon
Unveiled" (he would have liked to substitute "The Scarlet Woman" for
Babylon) and its apparent object an elaborate attack upon the Roman
Church, which in fact was but a cover for the real onslaught. With the
Romans, although perhaps he did not know it himself, he had certain
sympathies, for instance, in the matter of celibacy. Nor did he
entirely disapprove of the monastic orders. Then he found nothing
shocking in the tenets and methods of the Jesuits working for what they
conceived to be a good end. The real targets of his animosity were his
high-church brethren of the Church of England, wretches who, whilst
retaining all the privileges of the Anglican Establishment, such as
marriage, did not hesitate to adopt almost every error of Rome and to
make use of her secret power over the souls of men by the practice of
Confession and otherwise.

As this monumental treatise began in the times of the Early Fathers and
was planned to fill ten volumes of at least a hundred thousand words
apiece, no one will be surprised to learn that it never reached the
stage of publication, or indeed, to be accurate, that it came to final
stop somewhere about the time of Athanasius.

Realizing that the work was likely to equal that of Gibbon both in
length and the years necessary to its completion; also that from it
could be expected no immediate pecuniary profits, Mr. Knight looked
round to find some other way of occupying his leisure, and adding to
his income. Although a reserved person, on a certain Sunday when he
went to lunch at the Hall, in the absence of Mr. Blake who was spending
the week-end somewhere else, he confided his difficulties to Lady Jane
whom he felt to be sympathetic.

"The house is so big," he complained. "Mrs. Parsons" (Godfrey's old