Nicholas Trevlyn’s anger became so great at this point as well nigh to choke him.  He paused, not from lack of words, but from inability to utter them; and his son, boldly taking advantage of the pause, struck in once more in his own defence.

“Father, you talk of pestilent heresies, but what know you of the doctrines taught within walls you never enter?  Is it a pestilent heresy that Christ died to save the world; that He rose again for our justification; that He sent the Holy Spirit into the world to sanctify and gather together a Church called after His name?  That is the doctrine I heard preached today, and methinks it were hard to fall foul of it.  If you had heard it yourself from one of our priests, sure you would have found it nothing amiss.”

“Silence, boy!” thundered the old man, his fury suddenly changing to a white heat of passion, which was more terrible than the bluster that had gone before.  “Silence, lest I strike thee to the ground where thou standest, and plunge this dagger in thine heart sooner than hear thee blaspheme the Holy Church in which thou wast reared!  How darest thou talk thus to me? as though yon accursed heretic of a Protestant was a member of the Church of Christ.  Thou knowest that there is but one fold under one shepherd, and he the Pope of Rome.  A plague upon those accursed ones who have perverted the true faith and led a whole nation astray!  But they shall not lead my son after them; Nicholas Trevlyn will look well to that!”

Father and son stood with the table between them, gazing fixedly at one another like combatants who, having tested somewhat the strength each of the other, feel a certain doubt as to the termination of the contest, but are both ready and almost eager for the final struggle which shall leave the victory unequivocally on one side or the other.

“I had thought that the Shepherd was Christ,” said Cuthbert, in a low, firm tone, “and that the fold was wide enough to embrace all those baptized into His name.”

“Then thou only thinkest what is one more of those damnable heresies which are ruining this land and corrupting the whole world,” cried Nicholas between his shut teeth.  “Thou hast learned none such vile doctrine from me.”

“I have learned no doctrine from you save that the Pope is lord of all——­of things temporal and things spiritual—­and that all who deny this are in peril of hell fire,” answered the young man, with no small bitterness and scorn.  “And here, in this realm, those who hold this to be so are in danger of prison and death.  Truly this is a happy state of things for one such as I. At home a father who rails upon me night and day for a heretic—­albeit I vow I hold not one single doctrine which I cannot stand to and prove from the Word of God.”

“Which thou hast no call to have in thine hands!” shouted his father; “a book which, if given to the people, stirs up everywhere the vilest heresies and most loathsome errors.  The Bible is God’s gift to the Church.  It is not of private interpretation.  It is for the priests to give of its treasures to the people as they are able to bear them.”