me thou art too old. I see none but little lads
among them. Didst thou come to London with that intent?"

"Nay, for I only wist to-day that there was such a school. I came with
I scarce know what purpose, save to see Stephen safely bestowed, and
then to find some way of learning myself. Moreover, a change seems to
have come on me, as though I had hitherto been walking in a dream."

Tibble nodded, and Ambrose, sitting there in the dark, was moved to pour
forth all his heart, the experience of many an ardent soul in those
spirit searching days. Growing up happily under the care of the simple
monks of Beaulieu he had never looked beyond their somewhat mechanical
routine, accepted everything implicitly, and gone on acquiring knowledge
with the receptive spirit but dormant thought of studious boyhood as yet
unawakened, thinking that the studious clerical life to which every one
destined him would only be a continuation of the same, as indeed it had
been to his master, Father Simon. Not that Ambrose expressed this,
beyond saying, "They are good and holy men, and I thought all were like
them, and fear that was all!"

Then came death, for the first time nearly touching and affecting the
youth, and making his soul yearn after further depths, which he might
yet have found in the peace of the good old men, and the holy rites and
doctrine that they preserved; but before there was time for these things
to find their way into the wounds of his spirit, his expulsion from home
had sent him forth to see another side of monkish and clerkly life.

Father Shoveller, kindly as he was, was a mere yeoman with nothing
spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay comrades,
only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the elder,
churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College was little
more than a student. And in London, fresh phases had revealed
themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of Archbishop Wolsey's
house had been a shock to the lad's ideal of a bishop drawn from the
saintly biographies he had studied at Beaulieu; and he had but to keep
his ears open to hear endless scandals about the mass-priests, as they
were called, since they were at this time very unpopular in London, and
in many cases deservedly so. Everything that the boy had hitherto
thought the way of holiness and salvation seemed invaded by evil and
danger, and under the bondage of death, whose terrible dance continu