believe.
What perplexes me is that those who hold the Established or
Reformed faith, as men term it, have the same creeds, the same
doctrines as we ourselves. I have from time to time conformed to
the law, and gone to the services, and I have not heard aught
spoken within their walls that our good priest in old days used not
to tell me was sound doctrine. There be things he taught me that
these men say naught about; but no man may in one discourse touch
upon every point of doctrine. I freely own that I have been sorely
perplexed to know whence comes all this strife, all these heart
burnings."

"Thou wilt know and understand full soon, when once thou hast seen
the life of the great city and the strife of faction there,"
answered his companion, lapsing into the familiar "thou" as he
spoke with increased earnestness. "In thy hermit's life thou hast
had no knowledge of the robbery, the desecration, the pollution
which our Holy Mother Church has undergone from these pestilent
heretics, who have thought to denude her of her beauty and her
glory, whilst striving to retain such things as jump with their
crabbed humours, and may be pared down to please their poisoned and
vicious minds. Ah! it makes the blood boil in the veins of the true
sons of the Church, as thou wilt find, my youthful friend, when
thou gettest amongst them. But it will not always last. The day of
reckoning will come--nay, is already coming when men shall find
that the Blessed and Holy Church may not be defiled and downtrodden
with impunity for ever. Ah yes! the day will come--it is even at
the door--when God shall arise and his enemies be scattered.
Scattered--scattered! verily that is the word. And the sons of the
true faith throughout the length and breadth of the land shall
arise and rejoice, and the heretics shall stand amazed and
confounded!"

As he spoke these words his figure seemed to expand, and he raised
his right hand to heaven with a peculiar gesture of mingled menace
and appeal. Cuthbert was silent and amazed. He did not understand
in the least the tenor of these wild words, but he was awed and
impressed, and felt at once that the strife and stress of the great
world into which he was faring was something very different from
anything he had conceived of before.

By this time the travellers had reached the dreary waste called by
the inhabitants Hammerton Heath. At some seasons of the year it was
golden with gorse or purple with ling, but in