reachments which lead but to heresy, and
set folk racking their brains about sin and such trash, we'll get thee
shorn and into minor orders, and who knows what good preferment thou
mayst not win in due time!"

"Sir, I am beholden to you, but my mind is set on study."

"What kin art thou to a fool?" cried the minor canon, so startling
Ambrose that he had almost answered, and turning to another ecclesiastic
whose siesta seemed to have ended about the same time, "Look at this
varlet, Brother Cloudesley! Would you believe it? He comes to me with
a letter from mine old friend, in consideration of which I offer him
that saucy lubber Bolt's place, a gown of mine own a year, meat and
preferment, and, lo you, he tells me all he wants is to study Greek,
forsooth, and hear the Dean's sermons!"

The other canon shook his head in dismay at such arrant folly. "Young
stripling, be warned," he said. "Know what is good for thee. Greek is
the tongue of heresy."

"How may that be, reverend sir," said Ambrose, "when the holy Apostles
and the Fathers spake and wrote in the Greek?"

"Waste not thy time on him, brother," said Mr Alworthy. "He will find
out his error when his pride and his Greek forsooth have brought him to
fire and faggot."

"Ay! ay!" added Cloudesley. "The Dean with his Dutch friend and his
sermons, and his new grammar and accidence, is sowing heretics as thick
as groundsel."

Wherewith the two canons of the old school waddled away, arm in arm, and
Bolt put out his head, leered at Ambrose, and bade him shog off, and not
come sneaking after other folk's shoes.

Sooth to say, Ambrose was relieved by his rejection. If he were not to
obtain admission in any capacity to Saint Paul's School, he felt more
drawn to Tibble's friend the printer; for the self-seeking luxurious
habits into which so many of the beneficed clergy had fallen were
repulsive to him, and his whole soul thirsted after that new revelation,
as it were, which Colet's sermon had made to him. Yet the word heresy
was terrible and confusing, and a doubt came over him whether he might
not be forsaking the right path, and be lured aside by false lights.

He would think it out before he committed himself. Where should he do
so in peace? He thought of the great Minster, but the nave was full of
a surging multitude, and there was a loud hum of voices proceeding from
it, which took from him all inclination to find his way to the quieter
and inner porti