us Act; but, since it touches my father nearly, he mastered its
meaning with great pains, and has thought of little else for many days;
and the upshot of all this is, that next Bartholomew-tide he will go
forth, like Abraham of old, to wander he knows not whither;' at which
words Mrs. Golding sighed deeply, and sat as one amazed.

'It is even so, my kind friend,' said Mr. Truelocke, smiling.

'Well, I can't tell what you may think here of the matter,' went on
Master Harry; 'but in my conscience, I think my father's conscience
something too tender.'

'You speak like a man of this world, Harry,' says Andrew, who had come
in, and was looking at the young man with frowning brows and angry eyes.

'How else would you have me speak?' says Harry. 'I am but a plain
sailor, and I pretend not to know any world but this work-a-day world
that I have to get my bread in. I leave the new worlds in the moon, or
beyond it, to poets and madmen; and I'll tell you my mind of the matter,
if you will hear me.

He stopped, and Mrs. Golding said, 'Speak your mind, Master Harry, it's
ever an honest mind, and full of goodwill.'

'I will venture then,' said he, 'and do you bear with me, Andrew, and
father too. I take it the Church of this country is a good ship that has
to sail whither her owners will. A while since they were all for
steering her straight to the Presbyterian port; now that voyage likes
them not, and they would have her make for Prelacy. It's pity that the
good ship has owners of such inconstant minds; but why should not the
crew obey orders, and sail the ship as they are bid?'

'Wrong, all wrong, all wrong, Harry, my boy,' said the old man, with a
groan; 'thou hast no spiritual sense of these things. How dare Christ's
liegemen take their orders from the carnal rulers of this or any other
country? Have I not seen the government of England change like the moon,
ay, and more strangely? and shall I follow the changing moon as doth the
faithless sea, ebbing and flowing in my zeal for truth like the tide?
Nay verily! what was God's truth in Oliver's days is the truth of God
still; and I will cleave to it.'

As I gazed at the old man's face, pale and wrinkled and awful, I thought
that so might have looked the prophet Moses when he brake the tables of
the Law. Mr. Truelocke's deepset dark eyes flashed fire under his long
white eyebrows, which themselves seemed to stir and to rise and fall, as
he spoke with great passion, and he st