in a tone betwixt banter and discontent, as the burly priest spoken of set down a two-hooped jug, with no more than the froth of the ale left within.

"Ah! son," sighed the priest, as he drew a long breath after his draught, and complacently licked his lips, "had you the sorrows I bear, well might you be dry."

"Sorrows! go hang," said the first speaker.

"Son Herbert, if that be thy name-" began the priest. "Sayest thou it is not?" interrupted the other.

Nay, I say not so; but these are times when it is not only well, but wise, to have a good name or two handy." "Then trust they be never a monk's," laughed Herbert. The monk looked savage.

"Perhaps, master mariner," said he, "I bear as good a

name as ever

"Came out of a monastery, or entered the Devil's Puzzle," retorted the sailor.

"Well, have your way," cried the monk; "but when I was porter of the Priory of Bermondsey, did I ever begrudge you or others bite or sup, and now you would make a clatter and a coil over a beggarly pint of ale."

"A lie, priest; the liquor was over the first hoop. There was a full quart and more.”

"Well, say a quart. Have I not given you, or others, as I said, quarts at the hatch; and you would stint me with this quart-this one quart? pish!"

Dog, priest!" cried the sailor, "what of the thin stuff I have drank at your, I mean Sir Thomas Pope's, house?" "A murrain upon the knight," shouted the burly monk; "thief, spoiler, and sacrilegist. He hath pulled down the chapel of our priory, and will build him a house thereon. May it fall upon his head."

Amen, if it will serve you, friar," said one of the swash-bucklers.

"But to thy say," cried Herbert; "if I have drank and eat of your priory alms, think not that I am so dull witted, but I know the cheer was none of yours nor of your fellows." "What!" cried the priest, opening his round eyes, "not of ours?"

"No."

"The cheer!"

"Nor the charity.”

The monk looked angrily at the sailor, but the latter only laughed.

66

Come, come, friar," spoke one of the sailors, a rough, savage-looking fellow; "tis as Master Frith hath saidye were idle drones, living upon others' sweets. But as I was never a working bee, and ye gave me a little of your honey-little it was, and not of the best-why, I care no other than wish you back to the hive."

"That Frith ye speak of was an heretic, and as such deservedly burnt as ye will be, an ye recite more of his speeches," said the monk, regarding the last speaker with no great favour.

"Nevertheless," said the man, undaunted, "I will go and hear Master Mason preach next Sunday, in the fields below Hampstead."

"Thou art an heretic."

"Thou liest, to say so. I am a good Catholic," and the

man crossed himself; "but I will listen to what Master Mason says against thee and thine, not against

"Say not the Catholic religion," put in Herbert, "for that is Popish and dangerous.'

"I will not have the Lutheran," spoke the sailor, doggedly.

"No more will our Henry. So say the King's religion." "What is that?"

66

Why, neither Roman nor Reformed, save the follies of the one and the faults of the other."

66

Humph!"

There was a short silence. The subjects of king and religion were dangerous ones to speak of in mixed companies; yet were they more the topics of conversation than aught or all else, spite of the consequences so frequently happening therefrom. The monks looked upon the sailor Herbert evidently as a spy, and appeared seeking an opportunity to entrap him, while they avoided anything like an attack or accusation upon the monarch as they were used, lest the sailor should turn upon them.

"Have we not prayed for you, reprobates as you are?" said an old monk, taking up a defence of his order, rather uncalled for. "Have we not passed the night upon our knees, and on the cold, bare stones, to pray the holy saints-"

"Damn the saints!" shouted Herbert, but his continu

ance was drowned in the uproar that ensued; the monks vehemently raising their voices against the profanation of the saints, and the seamen and other ruffians as eagerly seconding them. Many of the worst among the company drew a leaden image of some canonized impostor from their bosoms, and kissed it devoutly. This display, which did not escape the eyes of Herbert, only added to his intemperate behaviour, and he mocked the men and their metal saints, thus drawing upon himself the ire of all parties.

up

66

66

He blasphemes," roared the monks, and the others took the cry. Herbert began to find his position critical. Say you," said a seaman, holding up a libel on the human form in the shape of a figure in lead, "say you there is no good in holy St. Bazile? Have I not gone through fire and water with this image of the good saint about me,; unharmed?"

"Hear him!" chorused the monks; "he speaks true." Praise to St. Bazile."

Here a little diversion in Herbert's favour occurred; the seamen, and the rest in possession of other saints than Bazile, were unwilling to let their pieces of wood, stone, or metal, pass unnoticed or unhonoured, to the sole glorification of St. Bazile; therefore a cry of saints' names arose mingled with vouchers of efficacy-that same appearing to lie in the simple fact of the holders of the saint's effigies being alive; whether they had not been in the same position without their little fetishes, never entering into their heads to question. Most probably had they done so, they would then have declared themselves dead men. Why they used carnal weapons, or wore defensive armour, with so efficient a protector as the good little saint in their pockets, was one of those questions gets no further than-why? My masters," said Herbert, "after the sight we have seen at Paul's, the false saints

66

"A lie, a lie-all lies!" screamed the monks; "lies fabricated by our enemies to our undoing."

66

Nay, but I have seen-"

"The work of Lutherans,'

Again the monks raised their voices against the blasphemer of the saints, and demanding his punishment.

"Give me a hearing," cried Herbert; "comrades, saw

you not the pulleys and cords of the images lately exposed and burnt? Saw you them not?"

66

Ay, ay!" spoke several; "we saw enough to stamp the images as false, but thou should have respected the holy saints themselves."

66

If," said Herbert, "I have done them injury, let them punish me. Why should man?"

66

Blasphemy. Again he blasphemes!" roared the monks. "Did they blaspheme, or do sacrilege, who drew the wooden and gilded images to Paul's, and there scoffed at and burned them ?"

"There were no images but such as they of the New Learning had themselves made."

"Nay, nay!" cried a mariner; "they were the images myself have seen in your churches."

"Ay, ay! they were-none other," said the assembled laymen. "Sons, ye are wrong. The foul fiend did cheat your eyes, and ye believed they were-those shameful mockeriesthe veritable effigies of the saints. Believe you this. There was burnt nothing true. All lies-they were lies all."

At this equivocal speech the auditors were silent; they were cruel and credulous. The long submittance and credence given to monachism was too great not to contend successfully against so simple an evidence as eye-sight. The most sceptical was convinced that the work he had seen at Paul's Cross was but the doing of the devil; and he gave up Herbert to the mercies of the monks incontinently.

The friars approached to seize upon Herbert, who drew back against the wainscoting of the room, brandishing his dagger, and vowing to give its length of steel to any should approach nigh enough for him to perform the promise. As the seaman spoke with a determined voice, eye unquivering, hand unfaltering, the monks hesitated; the remainder of the company, thinking the capture of the sailor belonged to his accusers and not to them, looked quietly on the scene. Watching his opportunity, Herbert made a sudden dash, and the monk facing the sailor, thinking it was meant at him, staggered back and fell, roaring as lustily for mercy as he had late shouted "death;" but giving no thought to the fallen man, Herbert sprang over the table, and fled through the open door. The burly monk, the hero of the ale jug,

followed, but, not so agile, he struck the table in his leap, and spite of its weight overset it: table and monk coming to the ground with a crash. The others of the friars cleared the impediments of the overthrown table and their fallen brother as well as they were able, and sped after the fugitive. Herbert, when he darted through the door and entered the passage without, gave an uncertain look first to the right then to the left, but feeling his pursuers to be close upon him, he sped forward, and turning an angle, and passing through darkness awhile, he arrived at the spot he had first set out, to wit-the entrance of the common chamber. As he drew nigh, the latest of the lay company was leaving the room, who espying Herbert, gave a great shout, but made no effort to lay hands on him. The monks had now come upon the seaman's traces, and Herbert seeing that no opposition was offered to him by the mariners and swashbuckler men, once more sprang forward, followed by the black and white gowned gentry in hot pursuit. Round this corner and down that passage sped the pursued, knowing nothing of where he was going, the monks being pretty well as ignorant of the intricacies of the house, and following the chase by sight and sound. Through court-yards and under arched ways went the seaman; now jumping out of one window to jump in at another. To Herbert it was becoming apparent, that if not running in a circle, he had been going over the same ground more than once. theless he sped on, the monks hastening after, their robes flying out behind them, and impeding their movements as greatly as their unwieldy figures. The pursued man had arrived at length at a distant portion of the house, and hearing no footsteps following, he stopped to gather breath. He listened-voices calling to one another, but far off. They had evidently lost trace of him, and Herbert stealthily approached the window and looked out; a sigh of relief escaped his breast as he noticed the opposite window to that he looked from. It was a window in a portion of the house almost distinct from the other part or parts of the Devil's Puzzle, in better repair, and lying a little back from the river, over which it looked nevertheless. A little flowergarden was paled in, and up the walls and round the windows ran a creeper. Opening the window of the room he occupied, Herbert let himself fall noiselessly to the ground,

Never