I had never known my uncle in so rough a temper.  Poor man!  I believe that all the time he sat there on the brewhouse steps, he was calculating woefully the cost of these visitors; and it hurt him the worse because he had a native disposition to be hospitable.

“But who is this lady that signs herself Emilia?” I asked.

“A crowned queen, lad, and the noblest lady in the world—­you heard your father say it.  This evening he may choose to tell us some further particulars.”

“Why this evening?” I asked, and then suddenly remembered that to-day was the 15th of July and St. Swithun’s feast; that my father would not fail to drink wine after dinner in the little temple below the deer-park; and that he had promised to admit me to-night to make the fourth in St. Swithun’s brotherhood.

He appeared at dinner-time, punctual and dressed with more than his usual care (I noted that he wore his finest lace ruffles); and before going in to dinner we were joined by the Vicar, much perturbed—­as his manner showed—­by the news of a sudden descent of papists upon his parish.  Indeed the good man so bubbled with it that we had scarcely taken our seats before the stream of questions overflowed.  “Who were these men?” “How many!” “Whence had they come, and why?” etc.

I glanced at my father in some anxiety for his temper.  But he laughed and carved the salmon composedly.  He had a deep and tolerant affection for Mr. Grylls.

“Where shall I begin!” said he.  “They are, I believe, between twenty and thirty in number, though I took no care to count; and they belong to the Trappistine Order, to which I have ever been attracted; first, because I count it admirable to renounce all for a faith, however frantic, and secondly for the memory of Bouthillier de Rance, who a hundred years ago revived the order after five hundred years of desuetude.”

“And who was he?” inquired the Vicar.

“He was a young rake in Paris, tonsured for the sake of the family benefices, who had for mistress no less a lady than the Duchess de Rohan-Montbazon.  One day, returning from the country after a week’s absence and letting himself into the house by a private key, he rushed upstairs in a lover’s haste, burst open the door, and found himself in a chamber hung with black and lit with many candles.  His mistress had died, the day before, of a putrid fever.  But—­worse than this and most horrible—­the servants had ordered the coffin in haste; and, when delivered, it was found to be too short.  Upon which, to have done with her, in their terror of infection, they had lopped off the head, which lay pitiably dissevered from the trunk.  For three years after the young man travelled as one mad, but at length found solace in his neglected abbacy of Soligny-la-Trappe, and in reviving its extreme Cistercian rigours.”

“I had supposed the Trappists to be a French order in origin, and confined to France,” said the Vicar.