ether at the west end
of the church a little timid at the sight of that noisy crowd in the
quiet house of prayer; but she had felt no disapproval at that fierce
vindication of truth. Her father had taught her of course that the purest
worship was that which was only spiritual; and while since childhood she
had seen Sunday by Sunday the Great Rood overhead, she had never paid it
any but artistic attention. The men had the ropes round it now, and it
was swaying violently to and fro; and then, even as the children watched,
a tie had given, and the great cross with its pathetic wide-armed figure
had toppled forward towards the nave, and then crashed down on the
pavement. A fanatic ran out and furiously kicked the thorn-crowned head
twice, splintering the hair and the features, and cried out on it as an
idol; and yet Isabel, with all her tenderness, felt nothing more than a
vague regret that a piece of carving so ancient and so delicate should be
broken.

But when the work was over, and the crowd and Anthony with them had
stamped out, directed by the justices, dragging the figures and the old
vestments with them to the green, she had seen something which touched
her heart much more. She passed up alone under the screen, which they had
spared, to see what had been done in the chancel; and as she went she
heard a sobbing from the corner near the priest's door; and there,
crouched forward on his face, crying and moaning quietly, was the old
priest who had been rector of the church for nearly twenty years. He had
somehow held on in Edward's time in spite of difficulties; had thanked
God and the Court of Heaven with a full heart for the accession of Mary;
had prayed and deprecated the divine wrath at the return of the
Protestant religion with Elizabeth; but yet had somehow managed to keep
the old faith alight for eight years more, sometimes evading, sometimes
resisting, and sometimes conforming to the march of events, in hopes of
better days. But now the blow had fallen, and the old man, too
ill-instructed to hear the accents of new truth in the shouting of that
noisy crowd and the crash of his images, was on his knees before the
altar where he had daily offered the holy sacrifice through all those
troublous years, faithful to what he believed to be God's truth, now
bewailing and moaning the horrors of that day, and, it is to be feared,
unchristianly calling down the vengeance of God upon his faithless flock.
This shocked and tou