r could I, unless the Lord had first laid hold of me. `_He_ hath
covered me with the robe of righteousness'--I do not put it on myself."

Gerhardt never made long speeches on religious topics. He said what he
had to say, generally, in one pithy sentence, and then left it to carry
its own weight.

"I say, Gerard, I've wondered more than once--"

"Well, Stephen?"

"No offence, friend?"

"Certainly not: pray say all you wish."

"Whether you were an unfrocked priest."

"No, I assure you."

"Can't tell how you come by all your notions!" said Stephen, scratching
his head.

"Notions of all kinds have but two sources," was the reply: "the Word of
God, and the corruption of man's heart."

"Come, now, that won't do!" objected Stephen. "You've built your door a
mile too narrow. I've a notion that grass is green, and another that my
new boots don't fit me: whence come they?"

"The first," said Gerhardt drily, "from the Gospel of Saint Mark; the
second from the Fourteenth Psalm."

"The Fourteenth Psalm makes mention of my boots!"

"Not in detail. It saith, `There is none that doeth good,--no, not
one.'"

"What on earth has that to do with it?"

"This: that if sin had never entered the world, both fraud and suffering
would have tarried outside with it."

"Well, I always did reckon Father Adam a sorry fellow, that he had no
more sense than to give in to his wife."

"I rather think he gave in to his own inclination, at least as much. If
he had not wanted to taste the apple, she might have coaxed till now."

"Hold hard there, man! You are taking the woman's side."

"I thought I was taking the side of truth. If that be not one's own, it
is quite as well to find it out."

Stephen laughed as he turned away from the door of the Walnut Tree.

"You're too good for me," said he. "I'll go home before I'm infected
with the complaint."

"I'd stop and take it if I were you," retorted Isel. "You're off the
better end, I'll admit, but you'd do with a bit more, may be."

"I'll leave it for you, Aunt Isel," said Stephen mischievously. "One
shouldn't want all the good things for one's self, you know."

The Queen did not remain for even a month at Woodstock. In less than
three weeks she returned to London, this time without passing through
Oxford, and took her journey to Harfleur, the passage across the Channel
costing the usual price of 7 pounds, 10 shillings equivalent in modern
times to 187 pounds, 10 shilli