his only increased the respect in which they were
held. They went to church like other people; and if they omitted the
usual reverences paid to the images, they did it so unobtrusively that
it struck and shocked no one.

The Roman Church, in 1160, was yet far from filling the measure of her
iniquity. The mass was in Latin, but transubstantiation was only a
"pious opinion;" there were invocation of saints and worship of images,
prayers for the dead, and holy water; but dispensations and indulgences
were uninvented, the Inquisition was unknown, numbers of the clergy were
married men, and that organ of tyranny and sin, termed auricular
confession, had not yet been set up to grind the consciences and torment
the hearts of those who sought to please God according to the light they
enjoyed. Without that, it was far harder to persecute; for how could a
man be indicted for the belief in his heart, if he chose to keep the
door of his lips?

The winter passed quietly away, and Isel was--for her--well pleased with
her new departure. The priest, having once satisfied himself that the
foreign visitors were nominal Christians, and gave no scandal to their
neighbours, ceased to trouble himself about them. Anania continued to
make disagreeable remarks at times, but gradually even she became more
callous on the question, and nobody else ever said any thing.

"I do wonder if Father Vincent have given her a word or two," said Isel.
"She hasn't took much of it, if he have. If she isn't at me for one
thing, she's at me for another. If it were to please the saints to make
Osbert the Lord King's door-keeper, so as he'd go and live at London or
Windsor, I shouldn't wonder if I could get over it!"

"Ah, `the tongue can no man tame,'" observed Gerhardt with a smile.

"I don't so much object to tongues when they've been in salt," said
Isel. "It's fresh I don't like 'em, and with a live temper behind of
'em. They don't agree with me then."

"It is the live temper behind, or rather the evil heart, which is the
thing to blame. `Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts,' which grow
into evil words and deeds. Set the heart right, and the tongue will
soon follow."

"I reckon that's a bit above either you or me," replied Isel with a
sigh.

"A man's thoughts are his own," interposed Haimet rather warmly.
"Nobody has a right to curb them."

"No man can curb them," said Gerhardt, "unless the thinker put a curb on
himself. He that can r