'I will venture then,' said he, 'and do you bear with me, Andrew, and father too. I take it the Church of this country is a good ship that has to sail whither her owners will. A while since they were all for steering her straight to the Presbyterian port; now that voyage likes them not, and they would have her make for Prelacy. It's pity that the good ship has owners of such inconstant minds; but why should not the crew obey orders, and sail the ship as they are bid?' 'Wrong, all wrong, all wrong, Harry, my boy,' said the old man, with a groan; 'thou hast no spiritual sense of these things. How dare Christ's liegemen take their orders from the carnal rulers of this or any other country? Have I not seen the government of England change like the moon, ay, and more strangely? and shall I follow the changing moon as doth the faithless sea, ebbing and flowing in my zeal for truth like the tide? Nay verily! what was God's truth in Oliver's days is the truth of God still; and I will cleave to it.' As I gazed at the old man's face, pale and wrinkled and awful, I thought that so might have looked the prophet Moses when he brake the tables of the Law. Mr. Truelocke's deepset dark eyes flashed fire under his long white eyebrows, which themselves seemed to stir and to rise and fall, as he spoke with great passion, and he struck his staff against the floor. Althea was looking from one to another, something puzzled; presently her silver voice broke the silence that had fallen upon us; she said, 'All that you say is so dark to me, it makes me feel like a fool for my lack of comprehension; will you, madam, tell me in a few words what it is that troubles you and Mr. Truelocke?' 'It's our new masters, dear heart, who have been making of new laws,' said Mrs. Golding; and Andrew added instantly,-- 'Our pastors, madam, must consent to renounce the Covenant, and must use the Common Prayer-Book as newly set forth by authority of King Charles the Second and his Parliament; or they must leave to preach and to pray in the churches called of England, and must renounce their livings too; and this by the twenty-fourth of August next, which the Papists and such-like cattle call St. Bartholomew's Day. That is the story in little of the doings which afflict our good mother and our reverend friend.' 'It's a dry short setting forth of the matter, friend Andrew,' said the old man. 'But is it a true one?' asked Althea. 'Yea,' said he, 'too true, this is the new law; but I shall, as I think, follow after the footsteps of godly Mr. Baxter; he hath already ceased preaching, that his weaker brethren, such as I, may be in no manner of doubt as to what he thinketh. I shall not change my mind twice, once having seen the great error of my early prelatical opinions,--as your good aunt knoweth I have seen it.'