f the Saviour. Must she needs _be_ the
Saviour to boot?"

"But we must worship her, trow?"

"Must we so? `Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt
thou serve.' Let us hold by God's Word, my daughter."

"Father, I wis so little thereof! nought at all but what I do hear of
you," said Agnes with a sigh.

"Then, my child," he replied gently, "list thou the better. And here is
a word for thee, and for all other in thy place: `If any man do desire
to do God's will, he shall know whether doctrine be truth or no.' Keep
that desire ever sharp on the whetstone of prayer. Then, surely as God
is in Heaven, thou shalt know."

The next minute he was gone.

"Agnes, sweet-heart!" demanded Dorothy that evening, in the sugary style
which she only used when she was in a particularly tormenting mood,
"prithee do me to wit of the name of thy dear friend, Master Black
Friar? I beheld him and thee in so sweet converse at the Cross, it
caused me to sigh that I had no such a friend as he. I pray thee
lovingly of his goodly name?"

The answers which Dorothy usually received from Agnes to questions of
this kind were as short as civility permitted.

"Master John Laurence," said she.

"And how long hast been of his cognisance, sweeting?" demanded Dorothy,
with more honey on her tongue than ever.

"I have wist him some six weeks," said Agnes.

"Six weeks! woe worth the day!" cried Dorothy, putting on an aspect of
sentimental sorrow. "And thou never spakest word, when thou wist how
dear all we do love thee, and the least we might do for joy of thy
finding a new friend were to have the great bell rung at Paul's! Agnes,
my fairest one, this is to entreat us but evil."

Agnes held her peace. She never felt any doubt of the exceedingly low
price to be set upon Dorothy's affections towards her.

"Is he a priest, darling?" inquired Dorothy in her most coaxing tone.

"Ay," replied Agnes as curtly as before.

"Good lack, how delightsome!" exclaimed Dorothy, clasping her hands in
mock rapture. "Do, of thy sweet gentlehood, bring me of his cognisance.
But to think what it were to have a priest thy friend, and alway get
absolution without no trouble at all!"

But about the last thing which Agnes had any intention of doing was to
introduce Dorothy to John Laurence.

After that interview at the Cross, Agnes often met the Black Friar.
Sometimes he passed her with a simple blessing in answer to her
reverence; but mor