Besides, you must know that not long since our valley was ringing with your fame as a preacher and testifier against the sad drinking customs of our people, and my dear foster-father wished many a time that he might have had speech with you upon a subject which is very dear to his own heart." "Is it so indeed?" said the young chaplain eagerly. "I am right glad at all times to welcome sympathy, I must confess, for you must know that my labours meet with no favour in most quarters, and are accounted the delusions of a wild fanatic and wicked despiser of God's good gifts! Yet I cannot keep silence while my heart burns within me at the evil I see around, and I must needs testify, even should my outspokenness bring me to the star chamber and the pillory, or worse." "Will you dare, when you are in attendance on the Lord Bryn Afon at Court, to speak these new doctrines openly?" asked Primrose; "for all tell me that they are new opinions, and that no other man has yet dared to lift up his voice openly against the evils of strong drink as you have done." "I thrust them not down unwilling throats," answered Master Vere, with a smile, "for in all things the law of charity appears to me to be a rightful rule for us to follow, yet there are many occasions on which I must speak or be consumed with the fire within me; and that I have already given offence to some in high places I doubt not, for all, alas! are not men of high and holy living like our king." "Do you not love our king?" said Primrose enthusiastically. "I had the honour of being presented in Court some few years since by the kindness of Lady Bryn Afon, and methinks the sweet gravity of his noble countenance and the rare beauty of his smile have ever since made of me a stauncher royalist maiden than before! For you must know that in our tiny hamlet by the riverside we have great dissensions upon political matters, the most part of us being, like my own dear foster-father and our good vicar, zealous cavaliers, while some few, led away by the teachings of one who of late years has worked much mischief in Cardiff and its neighbourhood, are fast sowing the seeds of schism and discord in our midst, having even set up for themselves a chapel in which to pray and preach against our church and our king, openly confessing that they would love nothing better than to burn our Prayer Books; and I trow they would willingly enough burn us likewise, an they could! Ah, but our king will never suffer you to be put in the pillory, Master Vere, for aught you may teach, for even we, in our ignorance of the world and in the seclusion of our lonely valley, have heard that he holds you in great esteem, and rejoices that his friend the Lord Bryn Afon should have secured for his chaplain one whose influence cannot fail to be for good!" "I do verily love my king dearly!" said the young chaplain, his pale face glowing under the earnest gaze of his fair companion's