privileges. What names are the babes christened by?"

"Please it your Ladyship, the little maid is Beatrice—so baptized by Dan Robesart this afternoon. For the knave, being born but an hour back, he is not yet baptized; but they think to call him Lawrence."

Both names went down on the Countess's tablet, after Guenllian had lighted a candle for that purpose.

"Did David give the thralls to wit of the games and rejoicings allowed to-morrow?"

"Ay, my Lady: and he saith one and all were greatly gladded thereby. My young Lord shall be right welcome to all his vassals some day to be."

The Countess drew a long breath of semi-apprehension. "May he be none the less desired, God grant, when they shall lay his head beneath the mould! O my maid, how great and awesome a thing is the life of a man on earth!"

"Madam, I heard once the parson of Ludgarshal, Dan John, to say"——

"Have on. A good man is Dan John. What said he?"

"That our Lord bound Him to care for the childer of them that feared Him; and that no prayer so made should ever be lost."

"But how answered?" was the low-toned reply. "Wenteline, our prayers be sometimes heard in a manner that crusheth the heart of him that prayed them. If the babe were to die!"

"Very dear Lady, it might be, elsewise, that a twenty years' space hereafter, you should heartily wish that he had died the sooner. Surely it can be no evil thing for a little child to go right to God, while he is yet lapped about with the white robes of his chrisom."

"I have buried three, Wenteline: and of them one went so. The other were pretty little childer that prattled at my knee. And it was like burying a piece of mine own heart to part with every one."

"Yet now, my Lady—would you have them back now?"

"Know I what I would? Surely it is better for them. And may God's will be done. Only to-night, Wenteline—to-night, holding that little babe, the thought came sorrowfully of my Roger, and how he faded from me like a white flower of the earth, or a star that goes out in the sky. Hand me yonder French Bible, Wenteline. Let me read a little touching the City where my childer dwell, and the King unto whose presence they be gone. May be it shall still my yearning when I think of them as there, and not here."

There were no Bibles at that date but in French or Latin; seven years were yet to elapse before John Wycliffe, to whom Guenllian had just referred, was to begin the translation of the first English Bible. But French Bibles and Latin Psalters were no unusual possession of noble families. Those families who were not noble were expected to get to heaven without any; for one of the most singular medieval ideas was that which restricted all intellect to those of noble blood. Blood and brains went together. If a man had not the former, it was out of all calculation that he should possess the latter.

Guenllian reached down from a high shelf the French Bible, bound in dark green velvet, with golden rims and embossed corners, and amethysts gleaming from every corner. The Countess unfastened the clasps, and turned to the last chapters of the book. She read, to herself and Guenllian, of the Golden City and the River of Gladness and the Tree of Life, until the world seemed to grow small and dim, and the world's conventionalities to become very poor and worthless. And then, turning a little further back, she read of the Good Shepherd who calleth His flock by name, and leadeth them out; and they know His voice, and follow Him. Then the golden clasps were closed, and the lady sat in silence for a few moments.

"Wenteline," she said, "we have tried to follow the Shepherd, thou and I, in the sunlit plains. Thinkest thou thy feet would fail if we come by-and-by to the arid slopes of the stony hills?"

Guenllian looked down, and nervously played with her chatelaine. "I cannot tell, an' it like my Lady. You look not for such troubles, Madam?"

"They that be sure of Satan's enmity had best look for trouble," was the pithy answer. "It is not here—yet. But it may be."

And it was to be. But it came not until Philippa Montacute was safe in the shelter of the Golden City, and under the shade of the Tree of Life. Then it broke fiercely on the unsheltered heads of those on the stony slope, and the baby that lay that day in the velvet wrapper came in for some drops of the thunderstorm.

The children in the Castle and in the hovel grew and thrived. They were both pretty, but had Lawrence Madison been kept as clean and dressed as nicely as the little Lord, he would have been the prettier of the two. As he grew old enough to take note of things, to tumble about on the sheepskin at the door, while his mother and Mariot attended to their duties within, and to listen and talk, a great ambition arose in his young heart. He did not envy the young heir at the Castle: an idea so lofty and preposterous never suggested itself for an instant. Lawrence would as soon have thought of grumbling because he was not an archangel, as because he was not my Lord Roger of March. But he did indescribably admire and envy the fishmonger across the street. He had a whole coat, and a clean apron; he looked like a man who always had plenty of nice things to eat, and a fire to warm himself by in cold weather. And the fishes were so beautiful! Lawrence had crept across the street and looked up at their lovely prismatic scales, as they lay in the baskets level with his head. He had seen Blumond's wife as she came to the door with her child in her arms. Little Beatrice was kept cleaner and nicer than he was. Why did not Mother give him nice things to wear like hers? And why, that evening when she and Father were talking about something—what were they talking about?—did Father look across at Lawrence, and say, with a lowered brow and a sulky tone quite unusual with him, something about letting a freeman manage for himself, and not be beholden to a villein? Now that he thought about it—and Lawrence was given to thinking about things—Father did seem more cross with him than the others. What had he done?

After many long cogitations on this and other puzzles, of which nobody knew, since he kept them all to himself, Lawrence finished by astounding his world.

Lawrence's world was very small, for it was bounded by a few yards of the street at its widest extent. The inner circle of this sphere, namely, the hovel, was built of mud and wooden laths, and was about fifteen feet in longitude. Separate rooms were an unimaginable luxury. Nine persons—Lawrence's father, mother, and grandmother, his two brothers, three sisters, and himself—ate, slept, and mostly worked, in the one chamber which formed the whole of the hut. There were also additional inhabitants in the shape of two cats, three hens, and a small and lively pig. It was not easy to move without falling over somebody or something which was apt to resent it in a way not suggestive of polished society. Perhaps it was quite as well, considering these circumstances, that the space was not cumbered with much furniture. Alike of bedsteads, chairs, and tables, the hut was entirely guiltless, and the inhabitants would scarcely have known what to do with them. A bundle of straw littered down in a corner, with a sheepskin thrown over it, was their idea of the utmost luxury in the way of sleeping accommodation—a luxury which they could rarely attain: and the ordinary bed