as herself, but advanced one step further. Convinced that the
true meaning of Lollardism was plain adhesion to Holy Scripture, he was
prepared to accept the full consequences. He had not only been thinking
for himself, but talking with Hugh Calverley: and Hugh, like his father,
was a Lollard of the most extreme type.

"It seemeth me, Mistress Maude," he said boldly, "less dread to say that
the Church Catholic must needs have erred, than to say that God in His
Word can err."

"But the whole Church Catholic!" objected Maude in a most troubled
voice. "All the holy doctors and bishops that have ever been--yea, and
the very Fathers of the Church!"

"`Nyle ye clepe to you a fadir on erthe,'" replied Bertram gravely.

"But, Master Lyngern, think you, the Holy Ghost dwelleth in the priests,
and so He doth not in slender folk like to you and me."

"Ay so?" answered he, with a slight curl of his lip. "He dwelleth in
such men as my Lord of Canterbury, trow? Our Lord saith the tree is
known by his fruits. It were a new thing, mereckoneth, for a man to be
indwelt of the Holy Ghost, and to bring forth fruits of the Devil."

"But our Lord behote [promised] to dwell in His Church alway," urged
Maude, though she was arguing against herself.

"He behote to dwell in all humble and faithful souls--they be His
Church, Mistress Maude. I never read in no Scripture that He behote to
write all the Pope's decretals, nor to see that no Archbishop of
Canterbury should blunder in his pastorals."

"But the Church, Master Lyngern--_the Church_ cannot err! Holy
Scripture saith it."

"Ay so?" said Bertram again. "Where?"

Maude was obliged to confess that she did not know where; she had "alway
heard say the same;" but finding Bertram rather too much for her in
argument, she carried her difficulty to Father Ademar when she next went
to confession. She would never have propounded such a query to Father
Dominic at Langley, since it would most certainly have ensured her a
severe scolding and some oppressive penance; perhaps to lie flat on the
threshold of the chapel and let every one pass over her, perhaps to lick
the dust all round the base of the Virgin's pedestal. And Maude's own
private conviction was that penances of this kind never did her the
least good. Father Dominic told her that they humbled her. It was true
they made her feel humiliated; but was that the same as feeling humble?
They also made her feel irritated and angr