Half an hour later they stood on the summit of a hill overlooking the tower. The full moon was casting its sheets of silver over the brown autumn landscape. The storm of the preceding night had entirely passed away, and only left a breezy freshness in the evening air. Far to the west loomed up the mountains of Wales, their peaks already glistening with snow. Far beneath them in the valley lay their home. The gray towers cast their shadows across the moat, and looked even more massive than they were in reality. Only a single light appeared in the buttery window, like a twinkling star. Never had the scene appeared so lovely to the young Lollards as it did when they were about leaving it, perhaps forever. But again the boys’ thoughts were different. The elder looked back to the long, unbroken line of ancestry which for so many hundred years had looked upon those walls and said, "They are mine." Far to the right hand and left lay the broad acres of woodland and pasturage which had owned his grandsire lord. Now all was changed. Close and narrow were the lines which bounded the patrimony one day to be his. But why? Were his arms less sinewy, his frame less well-knit than all the Geoffreys, and Johns, and Richards that had gone before? Why should Henry the usurper, who had no more just claim to the throne of England than himself, have a right to take away his father’s lands because he would not forsake the cause of his rightful monarch? And now he, and the brother he loved so well, must become dependents on the bounty of others because they wished to read the word of God in their own tongue, and worship him in their own way. Must this always last? Should the oppressor always walk about the earth? God thinks it right to speak no more to men in dreams and visions, or to point out to them the dim shadows of coming events. Faith in his wisdom is to be our only guide. But do I err when I say that sometimes the Comforter, who is expressly said to take of the things of God and show them unto us, whispers to the fainting soul words of cheering, and lifts, though it be but a very little way, the veil that hides the future? Thus it was with the Lollard boys. A voice in their hearts said to their inward eyes, "Ephatha!" be ye opened! and straightway they saw dimly, but surely, a glorious sight. The looked-for time of refreshing they saw arrived; England, their beautiful England, was free; and the pure Word of God in all its sweetness and power, reigned in every heart and home. The night of popish ignorance had fled away forever, the martyr’s blood had ceased dropping its precious seed into the earth, and instead thereof had sprung up an abundant harvest through the length and breadth of the world. Thus it was that the elder brother’s heart responded joyfully to the younger’s lips in the sublime words of the prophet: