’Madam, it’s all along of the new Act for Uniformity which was printed and set forth this last May.  You were too full at that time of your apprehensions for these young ladies to be curious to read that mischievous Act; but, since it touches my father nearly, he mastered its meaning with great pains, and has thought of little else for many days; and the upshot of all this is, that next Bartholomew-tide he will go forth, like Abraham of old, to wander he knows not whither;’ at which words Mrs. Golding sighed deeply, and sat as one amazed.

‘It is even so, my kind friend,’ said Mr. Truelocke, smiling.

‘Well, I can’t tell what you may think here of the matter,’ went on Master Harry; ’but in my conscience, I think my father’s conscience something too tender.’

‘You speak like a man of this world, Harry,’ says Andrew, who had come in, and was looking at the young man with frowning brows and angry eyes.

‘How else would you have me speak?’ says Harry.  ’I am but a plain sailor, and I pretend not to know any world but this work-a-day world that I have to get my bread in.  I leave the new worlds in the moon, or beyond it, to poets and madmen; and I’ll tell you my mind of the matter, if you will hear me.

He stopped, and Mrs. Golding said, ’Speak your mind, Master Harry, it’s ever an honest mind, and full of goodwill.’

‘I will venture then,’ said he, ’and do you bear with me, Andrew, and father too.  I take it the Church of this country is a good ship that has to sail whither her owners will.  A while since they were all for steering her straight to the Presbyterian port; now that voyage likes them not, and they would have her make for Prelacy.  It’s pity that the good ship has owners of such inconstant minds; but why should not the crew obey orders, and sail the ship as they are bid?’

‘Wrong, all wrong, all wrong, Harry, my boy,’ said the old man, with a groan; ’thou hast no spiritual sense of these things.  How dare Christ’s liegemen take their orders from the carnal rulers of this or any other country?  Have I not seen the government of England change like the moon, ay, and more strangely? and shall I follow the changing moon as doth the faithless sea, ebbing and flowing in my zeal for truth like the tide?  Nay verily! what was God’s truth in Oliver’s days is the truth of God still; and I will cleave to it.’

As I gazed at the old man’s face, pale and wrinkled and awful, I thought that so might have looked the prophet Moses when he brake the tables of the Law.  Mr. Truelocke’s deepset dark eyes flashed fire under his long white eyebrows, which themselves seemed to stir and to rise and fall, as he spoke with great passion, and he struck his staff against the floor.

Althea was looking from one to another, something puzzled; presently her silver voice broke the silence that had fallen upon us; she said, ’All that you say is so dark to me, it makes me feel like a fool for my lack of comprehension; will you, madam, tell me in a few words what it is that troubles you and Mr. Truelocke?’