ng that under the reign of Mary there would be little acceptance
for men of his views. During his stay in England he had met with a pair
of ladies who were henceforward to be very closely connected with his
life--Marjory Bowes, his future wife, and to all appearance still more
important her mother, Mrs. Bowes, to whom, contrary to the ordinary idea
of that relationship, he seems to have given much regard and affection,
notwithstanding that she was a melancholy woman, depressed and
despondent, sometimes overwhelmed with religious terrors, and requiring
continued support and encouragement in the faith. One cannot help
feeling a sort of compassion for the silent Marjory, of whom nothing is
ever heard, between her solemn lover of fifty and her sad mother. But
she is voiceless, and though there are letters of religious counsel
addressed to her under the title of "weill belovit sister," there is not
among them all, so strange is the abstract effect of religious
exhortation thus applied, one gleam of anything like individual
character, or which can throw any light upon what she was; which,
considering the marked individuality of the writer, is curious
exceedingly. We must hope that on other occasions, notwithstanding his
mature years, there were letters calculated to give more satisfaction to
a young woman than these expositions and addresses.

For the next two years Knox, now it is evident universally known
wherever the Reformation had penetrated, filled the place of minister to
a congregation of exiles assembled at Geneva, most of them refugees from
England, who had fled, as he himself had done, at the accession of Mary.
But his heart was in his own land, where in the meantime the progress of
the new Reformed faith was arrested, and silence and discouragement had
fallen over the country. The leaders were dispersed or destroyed, the
preachers silenced, and there was no one to gather together the many
groups of believers all over the country in whose hearts the seed had
sprung up strongly, but who as yet had made no public profession. In
1555 Knox suddenly reappeared in Scotland, brought thither at once by
urgent letters and by the eagerness of his own heart. When he arrived in
Edinburgh he found that many who "had a zeal to godliness" still
attended mass, probably finding it more difficult to break the continual
habit of their lives than the bonds of doctrine--and that the outer
structure of the Church remained much as it had