quite so readily cry out that
the provisions are too abundant. An outcry for short sermons has always
hitherto marked the spiritual decadence of a nation. "Behold, what a
weariness is it!" There is another inscription on the reverse side of
the seal. "I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of Hosts."

The English service began with the following Easter. Confession--not
yet abolished, yet so far relaxed as to be required of none who
preferred to omit it--was made in English, and the Lord's Supper was
also celebrated in English at the King's Chapel.

Isoult Avery began to think that she was to spend the year 1548 in
visiting. She had not been long back from Crowe, when a letter reached
her from her own home at Wynscote, inviting her to the wedding of her
brother Hugh with Mrs Alice Wikes, which was to take place on the
fourteenth of May. Jennifer Trevor shook her head in her most ominous
style at the date. But Hugh, though a sailor, was nevertheless not at
all superstitious, so far as concerned the point in question; and he had
already sturdily declined to change the date selected by Alice, though
half the gossips round Wynscote prophesied all manner of consequent
evil. For a maiden of the sixteenth century, Alice also was remarkably
free from the believing in omens and the observing of times: so Hugh and
she were married on the fourteenth of May, and Isoult Avery was never
able to discover that any harm had come of it.

On arrival at Wynscote, they found the house full and running over. Not
only the family who ordinarily occupied it were there--namely, Mrs
Barry, the widowed mother; Henry Barry, the head of the house, who was
by calling a gentleman farmer, and by inclination the gentleman without
the farmer; his wife Margaret, who would have made a better farmer than
himself; and his three exceedingly noisy and mischievous boys, by name
Michael, William, and Henry. But these, as I have said, were not by any
means all. There was the bridegroom Hugh, who grumbled good-humouredly
at being banished to Farmer Northcote's for the night, for there was no
room for him except in the day-time; there was Bessy Dennis, the eldest
sister, and John Dennis her husband, and William, Nicholas, Anne, and
Ellen, their children. No wonder that Isoult told her husband in
confidence that she did not expect to lose her headache till she reached
home. Will Barry was the incarnation of mischief, and Will Dennis, his
cousin an