nt there, hanged the Mayor, a
fervent Papist: and Father Prideaux would have fared ill at his hands,
had not all the Lutherans and Gospellers in the town risen in his
favour, and testified that he had not joined with other priests in the
rising (for the priests urged and fomented all these risings), but was a
good Protestant and faithful subject.

The fugitives were at first too busy to have much time for lamentation.
But when the pressure of constant occupation was relaxed, and the
furnishing and arranging of matters ended, they began to feel a little
like ship-wrecked men, thrown upon a strange coast. Isoult Avery was
astonished to find what a stranger she felt in London, where she had
lived some years with Anne Basset and the Duchess of Suffolk. One
afternoon in September she was peculiarly oppressed by this sense of
solitude in a crowd--the most painful solitude of any--but was trying to
bear up bravely. She sat at her work, with Kate at her hornbook beside
her, when the door was unlatched, and Isoult heard her husband's
well-known voice say,--"Come in,--you shall see her now."

Isoult rose to receive her unknown visitor.

He was a man of some fifty years or upwards, neither stout nor spare,
but tall, and of an especially stately and majestic carriage. His face
was bronzed as if with exposure to a southern sun; his hair and eyes
were dark, and he had a long dark beard. Grave and deliberate in all
his actions, his smile was exquisitely sweet, and his expression
thoughtfully gentle.

"Isoult," said her husband, "this is Mr Rose, an ancient friend of mine,
and now parson of West Ham, nigh unto Richmond. He would be acquaint
with thee, and so would his wife and daughter."

Isoult rose and louted to the visitor, and gave him her hand; and to her
surprise, Kate, who was commonly very shy with strangers, went up at
once to Mr Rose, and suffered him to lift her upon his knee and kiss
her.

"I knew not you were a man so much to childre's liking," said Avery;
"methinks I never saw my little maid so friendly unto a stranger afore."

"I love them dearly," answered Mr Rose. "And I pray you, Mrs Avery, if
it will please you to take the pain to visit my wife, that you bring
this little maid withal."

This was Isoult's first introduction to one of the most remarkable men
of the sixteenth century. Not so, perhaps, as the world sees eminence;
but as God and His angels see it. Thomas Rose was a Devonshire man, and
h