ternoon
they both attended and listened, but that good man was in failing
health, and his wise discourses were less frequent.

Where they were at other times, Stephen did not know, and hardly cared,
except that he had a general dislike to, and jealousy of, anything that
took his brother's sympathy away from him. Moreover Ambrose's face was
thinner and paler, he had a strange absorbed look, and often even when
they were together seemed hardly to attend to what his brother was
saying.

"I will make him come," said Stephen to himself, as he went with
swinging gait towards Warwick Inner Ward, where, sure enough, he found
Ambrose sitting at the door, frowning over some black-letter which
looked most uninviting in the eyes of the apprentice, and he fell upon
his brother with half angry, half merry reproofs for wasting the fine
spring afternoon over such studies.

Ambrose looked up with a dreamy smile and greeted his brother; but all
the time Stephen was narrating the history of the match, (and he _did_
tell the fate of each individual arrow of his own or Barlow's), his eyes
were wandering back to the crabbed page in his hand, and when Stephen
impatiently wound up his history with the invitation to supper on Easter
Sunday, the reply was, "Nay, brother, thanks, but that I cannot do."

"Cannot!" exclaimed Stephen.

"Nay, there are other matters in hand that go deeper."

"Yea, I know whatever concerns musty books goes deeper with thee than
thy brother," replied Stephen, turning away much mortified.

Ambrose's warm nature was awakened. He held his brother by the arm and
declared himself anything but indifferent to him, but he owned that he
did not love noise and revelry, above all on Sunday.

"Thou art addling thy brains with preachings!" said Stephen. "Pray
Heaven they make not a heretic of thee. But thou mightest for once have
come to mine own feast."

Ambrose, much perplexed and grieved at thus vexing his brother, declared
that he would have done so with all his heart, but that this very Easter
Sunday there was coming a friend of Master Hansen's from Holland: who
was to tell them much of the teaching in Germany, which was so
enlightening men's eyes.

"Yea, truly, making heretics of them, Mistress Headley saith," returned
Stephen. "O Ambrose, if thou wilt run after these books and parchments,
canst not do it in right fashion, among holy monks, as of old?"

"Holy monks!" repeated Ambrose. "Holy monks! Where be