acrilege, made him
shudder at himself and his own doubts! It was his one thought, and he
passionately sought after all those secret conferences which did but
feed the flame that consumed him.

The elder men who were with him were not thus agitated. Lucas's
convictions had not long been fixed. He did not court observation nor
do anything unnecessarily to bring persecution on himself, but he
quietly and secretly acted as an agent in dispersing the Lollard books
and those of Erasmus, and lived in the conviction that there would one
day be a great crash, believing himself to be doing his part by
undermining the structure, and working on undoubtingly. Abenali was not
aggressive. In fact, though he was reckoned among Lucas's party,
because of his abstinence from all cult of saints or images, and the
persecution he had suffered, he did not join in their general opinions,
and held aloof from their meetings. And Tibble Steelman, as has been
before said, lived two lives, and that as foreman at the Dragon court,
being habitual to him, and requiring much thought and exertion, the
speculations of the reformers were to him more like an intellectual
relaxation than the business of life. He took them as a modern artisan
would in this day read his newspaper, and attend his club meeting.

Ambrose, however, had the enthusiastic practicalness of youth. On that
which he fully believed, he must act, and what did he fully believe?

Boy as he was--scarcely yet eighteen--the toils and sports that
delighted his brother seemed to him like toys amusing infants on the
verge of an abyss, and he spent his leisure either in searching in the
Vulgate for something to give him absolute direction, or in going in
search of preachers, for, with the stirring of men's minds, sermons were
becoming more frequent.

There was much talk just now of the preaching of one Doctor Beale, to
whom all the tradesmen, Journeymen, and apprentices were resorting, even
those who were of no special religious tendencies. Ambrose went on
Easter Tuesday to hear him preach at Saint Mary's Spitall. The place
was crowded with artificers, and Beale began by telling them that he had
"a pitiful bill," meaning a letter, brought to him declaring how aliens
and strangers were coming in to inhabit the City and suburbs, to eat the
bread from poor fatherless children, and take the living from all
artificers and the intercourse from merchants, whereby poverty was so
much increas