d not uttered a word. "What should a Lancashire lad know of
the Tremaynes of Tremayne? I know somewhat thereanent.--Are you not of
that line?" he asked, turning his head towards Arthur.

"Ay, the last of the line," said the latter quietly.

"I thought so much. Then you must be somewhat akin unto Sir Richard
Grenville of Stow?"

"Somewhat--not over near," answered Arthur, modestly.

"Forty-seventh cousin," suggested Jack, not over civilly.

"And to Courtenay of Powderham,--what?"

"Courtenay!" broke in Jack. "What! he that, but for the attainder,
should be Earl of Devon?"

"He," responded Basset, a little mischievously, "that cometh in a right
line from the Kings of France, and (through women) from the Emperors of
Constantinople."

"What kin art thou to him?" demanded Jack, surveying his old playmate
from head to foot, with a sensation of respect which he had never felt
for him before.

"My father's mother and his mother were sisters, I take it," said
Arthur.

"Arthur Tremayne, how cometh it I never heard this afore?"

"I cannot tell, Jack: thou didst never set me on recounting of my
pedigree, as I remember."

"But wherefore not tell the same?"

"What matter?" quietly responded Arthur.

"`What matter'--whether I looked on thee as a mere parson's son, with
nought in thine head better than Greek and Latin, or as near kinsman of
one with very purple blood in him,--one that should be well-nigh Premier
Earl of England, but for an attainder?"

Arthur passed by the slight offered alike to his father's profession and
to the classics, merely replying with a smile,--"I am glad if it give
thee pleasure to know it."

"But tell me, prithee, with such alliance, what on earth caused Master
Tremayne to take to parsonry?"

The contempt in which the clergy were held, for more than a hundred
years after this date, was due in all probability to two causes. The
first was the natural reaction from the overweening reverence anciently
felt for the sacerdotal order: when the _sacerdos_ was found to be but a
presbyter, his charm was gone. But the second was the disgrace which
had been brought upon their profession at large, by the evil lives of
the old priests.

"I believe," said Arthur, gravely, "it was because he accounted the
household service of God higher preferment than the nobility of men."

"Yet surely he knew how men would account of him?"

"I misdoubt if he cared for that, any more than I do, Jack Enville