deep-set eyes, the high, narrow brow, the sensitive mouth, the delicately chiselled chin, there were revealed to the shrewd old prelate the enthusiastic temperament of a reformer, the idealism of a poet, the puissant desire to work, to change, to remake. And also, and therein lay his secret satisfaction, he read the fine acumen of a critic. A dangerous quality that, which was certain to make war upon the other qualities that struggled in his breast. Here was before him no blunt fanatic like John Ball, flying as unswervingly to his goal as the arrow shot from the bow, but one with the discerning mind that weighs, discriminates, and looks far enough ahead to see its own heart-break at the end.

"You sent for me?" although the tone was defiant, it was less so than Annys had intended it. Somehow he found it hard to be arrogant to this gentle old man whose flowing locks looked whiter than ever against the deep red of the bed-curtains. Only a beautiful old man upon his couch, looking at him with dim kindly eyes and a mouth that smiled. Far rather would he have faced a haughty prelate in rustling robes—that would have roused him and strengthened him in his hatred of all for which a Bishop stood.

"Yes," replied the old man, very gently, "I have sent for thee, for I have heard much of this russet priest who sways great bodies of men as they hearken to him, even as row upon row of corn is swayed by the wind that blows across the fields. I wished to see him and hold converse with him."

"Why should I come here before you that you may look upon me? I owe no allegiance to the Bishop of Ely. I serve him not, I serve only my master, John Wyclif."

"And our Master, Jesus Christ?" mildly interposed the Bishop.

"Yea, I serve my Master, Jesus Christ," asserted the poor priest, "but"—he was annoyed to find that the words in his heart did not rise so easily to his tongue as he would have them do. He felt the old man's eyes gravely fixed upon him.

"But?" he suggested with sedate politeness—"but?"

The young man reddened with discomfiture, but remained silent.

"I beg of you to go on," said the Bishop, suavely; "we are quite alone. I have sent for you to understand what is in your heart, and I would that you open it to me without fear."

The word stung the poor priest as the older man knew it would.

"Fear? I have no fear. What should I fear? I would say that one cannot serve two masters at one time, the one Christ, the other Antichrist. I do not see that one can bear at one and the same time the pectoral cross and the cross of Christ Jesus."

It was now the Bishop's turn to redden, but he only bit his lip for an instant and then smiled frankly. "I understand," he said, "I have heard somewhat of this kind of thing before. You poor priests claim that Christ founded no cathedrals, and that He worked with fishermen instead of Bishops. I know ye would like to see the palaces of Bishops razed to the ground that bread might be placed between the lips of the hungry, the gold of the altars melted that it might run into the purse of the poor. As your poet hath it,

Is that not it?"

His listener folded his arms tightly over his breast and nodded for answer.

"Ah, yes; ah, yes," continued the Bishop, musingly, "do I not know? Was I not even as thou in my youthful days? But I am an old man now, and many things lie bathed in the clear white light of knowledge that then lay darkly shrouded in mystery. My dear son, you are only one of many who fix their eyes on what should have been, instead of on what really was. Ye bury your faces within the pages of the Bible, and if ye look up once to see what is going on about you, it is only to contrast with impatience the teaching and example of the Church Visible with the teaching and example of Christ and His disciples. Ye are willing to look on the Church as it now is, and God knows there are faults and crimes enough to excuse some of your impatience, but ye refuse to look at the history of the Church, and at the magnificent service it has rendered in the cause of humanity. Ye refuse to consider gravely and seriously the work that it has accomplished, and to ask yourselves if any other human agency could have done a tenth as well. You critics are as men who have been saved by a bridge from a wild and devastating stream, and now once safely crossed, ye kneel down—not to thank God Almighty for having saved you, but to detect the flaws in the bridge."

Annys could not but be moved by the eloquence of the old man. He began to understand something of the great power which had been wielded from the throne of Ely. Yet he waited not with his answer, "Christianity is no longer the Church of Christ, it is the Church of Rome. Why keep up the pretence longer? I am but seeking to bring the people back to Christ as St. Francis did before me."

"Ay! as St. Francis did before you. He was so sure that all the world needed was the Word and his Rule of Poverty. Well, how many years after his death was it that the people complained to the authorities of the great wealth of the Franciscan monasteries?"

Annys remained silent.

"The Church is a more intricate matter than any one Book or any one Rule," went on the Bishop. "Why think you it was that the wolves of the north, as St. Jerome well called them, those wild tribes of Franks and Burgundians, of Vandals and Goths and Visigoths, savage as their onslaught was, yet paused in the face of Rome? Was it not because the Churchmen at the critical time were no idle dreamers, but the greatest statesmen the world ever saw? Ah, my son, if temporal power meant a fall from the early apostolic Church, do not forget that it was a fall brought about by the very greatness of its own servants. It was to the early Bishops that the world was forced to look for its rulers when the reins of government were slipping from the weak hands of all others. It was Cyprian at Carthage, Jerome and Leo at Rome, Ambrose at Milan, Augustine in Africa, Boniface at the court of Pepin, Martin at Tours, Hilary at Poitiers, and Marcel at Paris who were doing the work of the world. It is easy to speak of the Pope's need for Charles the Great when he placed the diadem of the Cæsars on the Frankish Emperor's brow; yet if Leo needed Charles, Charles needed Leo, as well, and we do not quite so often hear that. My son, the mitre has resisted many a blow that would have shattered the sword."

"Ah, but how much finer had the Church of Christ been built up even as Solomon would have had it, if it could have truly been said of the Head of the Church:—

"A beautiful dream, no more, my son. Take the Crusades; how easy is it for critics to aver that an intriguing Pope started them to increase his own glory and gratify his sense of power. Yet hast ever thought whether the peoples of Europe would not have fallen upon and destroyed one another but for the wise craft of a leader who united them by finding a common enemy? Now do not misunderstand me; no one more than I realizes the awful sins of the Schismatic Popes, the terrible greed of some of the powerful Churchmen, their criminal neglect of their charges; no one realizes more that the people have wrongs that should be righted. But I am sure it is for the good of the people that these wrongs be righted from within the Church. The people have no better friend than the Church. It has been the one Institution which