they?"

Stephen stared at him.

"Hear uncle Hal talk of monks whom he sees at my Lord Cardinal's table!
What holiness is there among them? Men, that have vowed to renounce all
worldly and carnal things flaunt like peacocks and revel like swine--my
Lord Cardinal with his silver pillars foremost of them! He poor and
mortified! 'Tis verily as our uncle saith, he plays the least false and
shameful part there!"

"Ambrose, Ambrose, thou wilt be distraught, poring over these matters
that were never meant for lads like us! Do but come and drive them out
for once with mirth and good fellowship."

"I tell thee, Stephen, what thou callest mirth and good fellowship do
but drive the pain in deeper. Sin and guilt be everywhere. I seem to
see the devils putting foul words on the tongue and ill deeds in the
hands of myself and all around me, that they may accuse us before God.
No, Stephen, I cannot, cannot come. I must go where I can hear of a
better way."

"Nay," said Stephen, "what better way can there be than to be shriven--
clean shriven--and then houselled, as I was ere Lent, and trust to be
again on next Low Sunday morn? That's enough for a plain lad." He
crossed himself reverently, "Mine own Lord pardoneth and cometh to me."

But the two minds, one simple and practical, the other sensitive and
speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not
understand one another. Ambrose was in the condition of excitement and
bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon
enthusiastic minds. He had studied the Vulgate, made out something of
the Greek Testament, read all fragments of the Fathers that came in his
way, and also all the controversial "tractates," Latin or Dutch, that he
could meet with, and attended many a secret conference between Lucas and
his friends, when men, coming from Holland or Germany, communicated
accounts of the lectures and sermons of Dr Martin Luther, which already
were becoming widely known.

He was wretched under the continual tossings of his mind. Was the
entire existing system a vast delusion, blinding the eyes and destroying
the souls of those who trusted to it; and was the only safety in the one
point of faith that Luther pressed on all, and ought all that he had
hitherto revered to crumble down to let that alone be upheld? Whatever
he had once loved and honoured at times seemed to him a lie, while at
others real affection and veneration, and dread of s