Breakfast was placed upon a small table in the bay-window, and consisted of such plain fare as milk, eggs and butter, with a few preserves, which were the supplies for the table in that early day. It is true that the serving-men in the lord's hall had more substantial feast, for cold venison and boar's-head with large quarters of pork, were consumed upon broad wooden plates, and not a few of those plates were seen upon the long tables in the hall, so large was this nobleman's domestic establishment. CHAPTER IV. THE CONVERSATION. It would be something strange in these days to find man's tongue, through fear, prevented from discoursing upon any subject, political, physical, or religious. Men are so enlightened, and civil and religious freedom are so strongly established in this kingdom, that no one is afraid of investigating any subject. Truth does not require any power but that of God to support it, and having his, it will predominate unto the end, through all discouragements and persecutions. The man who loves his kind will stand the least in awe of death, or of any consequences whatever arising from that position in which his faith in God may place him. But the men, in our day, who do not look deeply into times gone by, can scarcely conceive the terrors into which men were driven in those days when Freston Tower was first inhabited. Throughout the length and breadth of England, in the years 1484 and 1485, awful divisions were created by the dissensions of the houses of York and Lancaster. Men scarcely trusted each other with open declarations of loyalty, or with their equally prevalent hatred of King Richard III. Nor were they much less happy in their feelings concerning their religion. The absolute power of the Pope had begun to be called in question. Wickliffe's Bible was doing its work, and Caxton's press began to disseminate the light of truth amidst inquiring minds. Yet, upon the subject of religion, faith and practice seemed to be at a most appalling distance from each other; and men did not like to speak before strangers, even of the God who made them, for fear of incurring the threatened censures of the Papal Hierarchy. It was a singular thing that politics and religion should chance to be the first subjects discoursed upon by the young men, then partaking of their earliest meal in the library of Ellen De Freston. This conversation arose from the circumstance of De Freston having received a curious edition of Æsop's Fables. 'I have a curiosity to show you here, young men,' said De Freston; and he took down from a shelf over the entrance-door, a volume, having the royal arms engraved, or rather worked, upon the inside of the cover. 'You are learned, Master Latimer--can you decypher the character?'