y to blame if I let this grim portrayal so work on you as to
lead you to beggar not only yourself, but your brother, with no consent
of his."

For Tibble was no impulsive Italian, but a sober-minded Englishman of
sturdy good sense, and Ambrose was reasonable enough to listen and only
drop in a few groats which he knew to be his own.

At the same moment, a church bell was heard, the tone of which Steelman
evidently distinguished from all the others, and he led the way out of
the Pardon churchyard, over the space in front of Saint Paul's. Many
persons were taking the same route; citizens in gowns and gold or silver
chains, their wives in tall pointed hats; craftsmen, black-gowned
scholarly men with fur caps, but there was a much more scanty proportion
of priests, monks or friars, than was usual in any popular assemblage.
Many of the better class of women carried folding stools, or had them
carried by their servants, as if they expected to sit and wait.

"Is there a procession toward? or a relic to be displayed?" asked
Ambrose, trying to recollect whose feast-day it might be.

Tibble screwed up his mouth in an extraordinary smile as he said, "Relic
quotha? yea, the soothest relic there be of the Lord and Master of us
all."

"Methought the true Cross was always displayed on the High Altar," said
Ambrose, as all turned to a side aisle of the noble nave.

"Rather say hidden," muttered Tibble. "Thou shalt have it displayed,
young sir, but neither in wood nor gilded shrine. See, here he comes
who setteth it forth."

From the choir came, attended by half a dozen clergy, a small, pale man,
in the ordinary dress of a priest, with a square cap on his head. He
looked spare, sickly, and wrinkled, but the furrows traced lines of
sweetness, his mouth was wonderfully gentle, and there was a keen
brightness about his clear grey eye. Every one rose and made obeisance
as he passed along to the stone stair leading to a pulpit projecting
from one of the columns.

Ambrose saw what was coming, though he had only twice before heard
preaching. The children of the ante-reformation were not called upon to
hear sermons; and the few exhortations given in Lent to the monks of
Beaulieu were so exclusively for the religious that seculars were not
invited to them. So that Ambrose had only once heard a weary and heavy
discourse there plentifully garnished with Latin; and once he had stood
among the throng at a wake at Millbrook, and heard