“Child! dear child!” said he, “you are welcome to my old eyes.  May God bless you, as He has aided you to be faithful alike to Him and to your King through much trial.”

“Ah, sir!  I have sorely repented the folly and ambition that would not heed your counsel.”

“No doubt, my maid; but the spirit of humility and repentance hath worked well in you.  I fear me, however, that you are come back to further trials, since probably Portchester may be no longer our home.”

“Nor Winchester?”

“Nor Winchester.”

“Then is this new King going to persecute as in the old times you talk of?  He who was brought over to save the Church!”

“He accepts the English Church, my maid, so far as it accepts him.  All beneficed clergy are required to take the oath of allegiance to him before the first of August, now approaching, under pain of losing their preferments.  Many of my brethren, even our own Bishop and Dean, think this merely submission to the powers that be, and that it may be lawfully done; but as I hear neither the Archbishop himself, nor my good old friends Doctors Ken and Frampton can reconcile it to their conscience, any more than my brother Stanbury, of Botley, nor I, to take this fresh oath, while the King to whom we have sworn is living.  Some hold that he has virtually renounced our allegiance by his flight.  I cannot see it, while he is fighting for his crown in Ireland.  What say you, Anne, who have seen him; did he treat his case as that of an abdicated prince?”

“No, sir, certainly not.  All the talk was of his enjoying his own again.”

“How can I then, consistently with my duty and loyalty, swear to this William and Mary as my lawful sovereigns?  I say not ’tis incumbent on me to refuse to live under them a peaceful life, but make oath to them as my King and Queen I cannot, so long as King James shall live.  True, he has not been a friend to the Church, and has wofully trampled on the rights of Englishmen, but I cannot hold that this absolves me from my duty to him, any more than David was freed from duty to Saul.  So, Anne, back must we go to the poverty in which I was reared with your own good father.”

Anne might grieve, but she felt the gratification of being talked to by her uncle as a woman who could understand, as he had talked to her mother.

“The first of August!” she repeated, as if it were a note of doom.

“Yes; I hear whispers of a further time of grace, but I know not what difference that should make.  A Christian man’s oath may not be broken sooner or later.  Well, poverty is the state blessed by our Lord, and it may be that I have lived too much at mine ease; but I could wish, dear child, that you were safely bestowed in a house of your own.”

“So do not I,” said Anne, “for now I can work for you.”

He smiled faintly, and here Mr. Fellowes joined them; a good man likewise, but intent on demonstrating the other side of the question, and believing that the Popish, persecuting King had forfeited his rights, so that there need be no scruple as to renouncing what he had thrown up by his flight.  It was an endless argument, in which each man could only act according to his own conscience, and endeavour that this conscience should be as little biassed as possible by worldly motives or animosity.