me in this place will strengthen
my hands. I have spoken this," he said, "not willingly; but I would have
no one mistake my purpose in the matter."

Then the Barons came silently to do obeisance; and so Renatus came to
his own; but more of him I must not here say, save that he ruled his
realm wisely and well, and ever gave God the glory.

* * * * *

The Slype House

In the town of Garchester, close to St. Peter's Church, and near the
river, stood a dark old house called the Slype House, from a narrow
passage of that name that ran close to it, down to a bridge over the
stream. The house showed a front of mouldering and discoloured stone to
the street, pierced by small windows, like a monastery; and indeed, it
was formerly inhabited by a college of priests who had served the
Church. It abutted at one angle upon the aisle of the church, and there
was a casement window that looked out from a room in the house,
formerly the infirmary, into the aisle; it had been so built that any
priest that was sick might hear the Mass from his bed, without
descending into the church. Behind the house lay a little garden,
closely grown up with trees and tall weeds, that ran down to the stream.
In the wall that gave on the water, was a small door that admitted to an
old timbered bridge that crossed the stream, and had a barred gate on
the further side, which was rarely seen open; though if a man had
watched attentively he might sometimes have seen a small lean person,
much bowed and with a halting gait, slip out very quietly about dusk,
and walk, with his eyes cast down, among the shadowy byways.

The name of the man who thus dwelt in the Slype House, as it appeared in
the roll of burgesses, was Anthony Purvis. He was of an ancient family,
and had inherited wealth. A word must be said of his childhood and
youth. He was a sickly child, an only son, his father a man of
substance, who lived very easily in the country; his mother had died
when he was quite a child, and this sorrow had been borne very heavily
by his father, who had loved her tenderly, and after her death had
become morose and sullen, withdrawing himself from all company and
exercise, and brooding angrily over his loss, as though God had
determined to vex him. He had never cared much for the child, who had
been peevish and fretful; and the boy's presence had done little but
remind him of the wife he had lost; so that the child h