Beshrew me if I submit to much more! Patience and
forbearance are useless with such a man. I would I had not conceded
all I have done in the interests of peace."

Bertram's face was crimson with anger, Edred's eyes had widened in
astonishment, whilst Julian burst out in indignant remonstrance and
argument.

"His ground! his rights! How can he dare say that? Why, the buck
was killed at Juno's Pool; and all the world knows that that is
within the confines of Chad, and that all forest rights there
belong to the Lord of Chad! I would I could force his false words
down his false throat! I would I could--" but the boy suddenly
ceased, because he caught his mother's warning eye upon him, and
saw that his father had opened his lips to speak.

"Ay, and he knows it himself as well as we do; but he is growing
bolder and bolder through that monstrous claim he is ever
threatening to push--the claim of his son-in-law to be rightful
Lord of Chad! Phew! he will find it hard to prove that claim, or to
oust the present lord. But Mortimer has money and to spare, and
Chad has long been to him what Naboth's vineyard was to King Ahab--

"Brother Emmanuel, that simile is thine, and a right good one, too.

"He will seize on any pretext to pick a quarrel; and if he dares,
he will push that quarrel at the point of the sword. I do not fear
him; I have the right on my side. But we may not blind ourselves to
this: that he is a right bitter and treacherous foe, and that
should we give any, even the smallest cause of suspicion or
offence, he would seize upon that to ruin us."

Sir Oliver looked keenly round the table at all assembled there,
and many knew better than his sons what was in his mind at the time
and what had caused him to speak thus.

For a long while now the leaven of Lollardism had been working
silently in the country, and there were very many even amongst
orthodox sons of the Church who were more or less "bitten" by some
of the new notions. It need hardly be said that wherever light is,
it will penetrate in a mysterious and often inexplicable fashion;
and although there was much extravagance and perversion in the
teachings of the advanced Lollards, there was undoubtedly amongst
them a far clearer and purer light than existed in the hearts of
those of the common people who had been brought up beneath the sway
of the priests, themselves so often ignorant and ill-living men.

And so the light gradually spread; and many who would