-wind fate might blow her.
Cromwell's mighty arm held the fretful country in subjection, making the
name of England great and terrible abroad, and silencing every whisper
of disaffection at home. The Puritans, in their hour of triumph, stamped
upon the land the impress of their strong and bitter individuality; and
a morose asceticism, part real and part affected, crushed out of life
all the innocent pleasure of living. With every man determined to be
better than his neighbor, the competition in saintliness ran high. Under
its vigorous stimulus the May-pole and the Yule-log were alike branded
as heathenish observances, the Christmas-pie became a "pye of
abomination," and all amusements, from the drama to bear-baiting, were
censured with impartial severity. Feast-days were abolished, and even to
display the emblems of the Nativity was held to be sedition. The
Established Church, cowed and shorn of its splendor, was treated with
surly contempt; the Catholics were altogether beyond the pale of
charity. It was not a time calculated to promote festivity; yet, while
the heralds proclaimed through the frosty streets that Christmas at last
was dead, Annis Vane, with holly and ivy, with Yule-dough and
Babie-cake, was making all things ready for its mysterious birth. And as
she worked she sang softly under breath the refrain of a carol she had
learned at her nurse's knee,--

"This endris night
I saw a sight,
A star as bright as day;
And ever among
A maiden sung
Lullay, by-by, lullay."

"Is it not strange, mother," she said, breaking suddenly off, "that men
should deem it a mark of holiness to cast derision on the birth-night
of their Saviour?"

"Let us be just even to our enemies," replied Mistress Vane, gently.
"They think not to deride the Nativity, so much as to condemn the
riotous fashion in which Christians were wont to keep the feast. There
have been times, Annis, when the Lord of Misrule did more discredit to
this holy season than does the Puritan to-day."

Annis opened her blue eyes to their very utmost. This view of the matter
was one she was hardly prepared to accept. "Why, dearest mother," she
protested, "when should we venture to be happy, if not on Christmas-day?
And how can we show ourselves too joyful for our salvation? And did not
his most blessed majesty King Charles knight with his own royal hand a
Lord of Misrule who held court in the Middle Temple?"

Mistress Vane smiled at her daughter