ect of thy mother should be
her checked apron."

Rudolph laughed. "Then who is the stern man, and who the merry one?"

"I should guess the stern man to be Manning Brown, the husband of Isel.
The merry, pleasant-faced man, I think, must be his nephew Stephen.
`Stephen the Watchdog' they used to call him; he was one of the Castle
watchmen."

"At Oxford? Was it Oxford, then, where we used to live?"

"It was Oxford."

"I should like to go there again."

"Take heed thou do not so. Thou are so like both thy father and mother
that I should fear for thy safety. No one would know me, I think. But
for thee I am not so sure. And if they were to guess who thou art, they
would have thee up before the bishops, and question thee, and brand thee
with the dreadful name of `heretic,' as they did to thy parents."

"Mother, why would they do these things?--why did they do them?"

"Because they loved idols, and after them they would go. We worship
only the Lord our God, blessed be He! And thou wilt find always,
Rudolph, that not only doth light hate darkness, but the darkness also
hateth the light, and tries hard to extinguish it."

"Yet if they worship the same God that we do--"

"Do they? I cannot tell. Sometimes I think He can hardly reckon it so.
The God they worship seems to be no jealous God, but one that hath no
law to be broken, no power to be dreaded, no majesty to be revered. `If
I be a Master,' said the Holy One by Malachi the Prophet, `where is My
fear?' And our Lord spake to the Sadducees, saying, `Do ye not
therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of
God?' They seem to be strangely fearless of breaking His most solemn
commands--even the words that He spake to Moses in the sight of all
Israel, on the mount that burned with fire. Strangely fearless! when
the Master spake expressly against making the commands of God of no
effect through man's tradition. What do they think He meant? Let them
spill a drop of consecrated wine--which He never told them to be careful
over--and they are terrified of His anger: let them deliberately break
His distinct laws, and they are not terrified at all. The world has
gone very, very far from God."

They sat for a little while in silence.

"Mother," said Rudolph at last, "who do you think that man was whom I
met, that looked so hard at me, and seemed to think me like my parents?
He spoke of `Ermine,' too."

"I can only guess, Rudolph. I t