s, such a plot was hatched and its carrying out prevented in
the exact way that this story relates."

"Mean, cowardly, wicked fellows they must have been to want to murder
the wives and children and burn and plunder the houses of the men that
were defending them and theirs from a common enemy!" exclaimed the boy,
his face flushing and eyes flashing with righteous indignation.

"Very true; but such are the lessons popery teaches and always has
taught; 'no faith with heretics,' no mercy to any who deny her dogmas;
and that anything is right and commendable which is done to destroy
those who do not acknowledge her authority and to increase her power;
one of her doctrines being that the end sanctifies the means!"

"But what did they mean when they said they were going to have a second
St. Bartholomew in the valleys?" asked Grace.

"Did you never hear of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, daughter?" her
father asked, stroking her hair caressingly as she sat upon his knee.

"No, papa; won't you tell me about it?"

"It occurred in France a little more than three hundred years ago; it
was a dreadful massacre of the Protestants to the number of from sixty
to a hundred thousand; and it was begun on the night of the twenty-third
of August; which the Papists call St. Bartholomew's Day.

"The Protestants were shot, stabbed, murdered in various ways, in their
beds, in the street, any where that they could be found; and for no
crime but being Protestants."

"And popery would do the very same now and here, had she the power,"
commented Mr. Dinsmore, "for it is her proudest boast that she never
changes. She teaches her own infallibility; and what she has done she
will do again if she can."

"What is infallibility, papa?" asked Grace. "To be infallible is to be
incapable of error or of making mistakes," he answered. "So popery
teaching that she has never done wrong or made a mistake justifies all
the horrible cruelties she practised in former times; and, in fact, she
occasionally tells us, through some of her bolder or less wary
followers, that what she has done she will do again as soon as she
attains the power."

"Which she never will in this free land," exclaimed Edward.

"Never, provided Columbia's sons are faithful to their trust;
remembering that 'eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,'" responded
his grandfather.

Grace was clinging tightly to her father, and her little face was pale
and wore a look of fright.

"