up, which now is yielding to every soul speaking the English tongue, the priceless boon of perfect liberty of conscience toward man, and toward God. Bertrand was glad to stretch his limbs by the hut fire after his journey; and after the simple worship, which always closed the day’s labor of these people, all betook themselves to rest. All but one. Geoffrey could not sleep; so he arose softly, and, wrapping himself in his cloak, bounded up the cliffs by a path so narrow and rocky, and close to the brink of the precipice, that only so firm and steady a foot as his own would care to tread it by night. As he passed out of the shadow of the cottage, a man lifted up his head from behind some bushes, and shook himself as though wearied of a confined posture. Still, he did not stand boldly upright, but crouched again, keeping in the shade, and then throwing a look of malignant hatred at the little hut and its quiet sleepers, he muttered an oath of satisfaction, and crept stealthily upon the boy’s track. Meanwhile, what were the thoughts of the young Lollard? Geoffrey and Hubert were both Lollards, but in a very different spirit. Geoffrey, the heir of a noble baronetcy, saw his patrimony destroyed, his father outlawed and hunted, himself dependent on the charity of the poor for a place of shelter, and his very soul went out in opposition to the oppressors and to their religion. In Lollardism he found a freedom which agreed with his notions of right, and a purity of morals suited to his taste. The younger brother embraced the reformed religion, because he found in the doctrines it taught, a way of relief for a sinning soul--because they brought to him, free, and untrammeled by superstition and the traditions of men, the Gospel of the Cross, "the sweet story of old." Geoffrey was a Lollard, because with all his strength he hated Rome, and desired to break its yoke from the necks of his countrymen; Hubert, because he loved Jesus, and longed, with all the fervor of his spirit, to convey the tidings of deliverance from a far greater power than that wielded in the Vatican, to the priest-ridden, ignorant poor of his native land. It was natural, therefore, that the former should have many a bitter thought rising in his mind as he thought of the smouldering ruins of Forest Tower. The insult and wrong which had been heaped upon his noble race seemed more than he could bear; his whole soul revolted against the tyranny.