WENTY FIVE.

OLD HAUNTS.

"O the oak, and the birch, and the bonny holly tree,
They flourish best at home in my own countree."

When the absence of the barbarous token of the execution was discovered,
suspicion instantly fell on the More family, and Margaret, her husband,
and her brother, were all imprisoned. The brave lady took all upon
herself, and gave no names of her associates in the deed, and as Henry
the Eighth still sometimes had better moods, all were soon released.

But that night had given Ambrose a terrible cough, so that Dennet kept
him in bed two days. Indeed he hardly cared to rise from it. His whole
nature, health, spirits, and mind, had been so cruelly strained, and he
was so listless, so weak, so incapable of rousing himself, or turning to
any fresh scheme of life, that Stephen decided on fulfilling a long-
cherished plan of visiting their native home and seeing their uncle, who
had, as he had contrived to send them word, settled down on a farm which
he had bought with Perronel's savings, near Romsey. Headley, who was
lingering till Aldonza could leave her mistress and decide on any plan,
undertook to attend to the business, and little Giles, to his great
delight, was to accompany them.

So the brothers went over the old ground. They slept in the hostel at
Dogmersfield where the Dragon mark and the badge of the Armourers'
Company had first appeared before them. They found the very tree where
the alderman had been tied, and beneath which Spring lay buried, while
little Giles gazed with ecstatic, almost religious veneration, and
Ambrose seemed to draw in new life with the fresh air of the heath, now
becoming rich with crimson bells. They visited Hyde Abbey, and the
well-clothed, well-mounted travellers received a better welcome than had
fallen to the lot of the hungry lads. They were shown the grave of old
Richard Birkenholt in the cloister, and Stephen left a sum to be
expended in masses for his behoof. They looked into Saint Elizabeth's
College, but the kind warden was dead, and a trembling old man who
looked at them through the wicket hoped they were not sent from the
Commissioners. For the visitation of the lesser religious houses was
going on, and Saint Elizabeth's was already doomed. Stephen inquired at
the White Hart for Father Shoveller, and heard that he had grown too old
to perform the office of a bailiff, and had retired to the parent abbey.
The brothers therefore renounced