"`As a watch in the night!'" said Joyce Morrell solemnly. "`As a vapour that vanisheth away!' What time have we for idle fooleries? Only time to learn the letters that we shall spell hereafter--to form the strokes and loops wherewith we shall write by and bye. Here we know but the alphabet of either faith or love." "And how often are we turned back in the very alphabet of patience!" "Ay, we think much to tarry five minutes for God, though He may have waited fifty years for us. I reckon it takes God to bear with this poor thing, man, that even at his best times is ever starting aside like a broken bow,--going astray like a lost sheep. Thank God that He hath laid on the only Man that could bear them the iniquities of us all, and that He hath borne them into a land not inhabited, where the Lord Himself can find them no more." "And let us thank God likewise," said Lady Lettice, "that our blessed duty is to abide in Him, and that when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming." CHAPTER FIFTEEN. APPENDIX. ROBERT CATESBY. He was a descendant of another infamous Catesby, Sir John, the well-known Minister of Richard the Third, satirised in the distich-- "The _Cat_, the Bat, and Lovel the Dog, Govern all England under the Hog." This gentleman fought with his master at Bosworth, and was beheaded three days after the battle. His son George, who died in 1495-6, was father of Sir Richard, who died in 1552, and who was succeeded by his grandson Sir William, then aged six years, having been born at Barcheston in 1546. He was perverted by Campion in 1580, and developed into a famous recusant; was cited before the Star Chamber in 1581, chiefly on the confession of Campion, for being a harbourer of Jesuits and a hearer of mass; married at Ashby, 9th June 1566, Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton, Warwickshire; and died in 1598. The eldest of his children (four sons and two daughters) was Robert Catesby, the conspirator, born at Lapworth, Warwickshire, in 1573. At the age of thirteen--for boys went up to college then at a much earlier age than now--he matriculated, October 27th, 1586, at Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College), Oxford, a house "much suspected," many of its undergraduates being privately Roman Catholics. It was probably during his residence in Oxford that he became a Protestant; and his change of religion being evidently of no moral value, he also led a dissipated and extravagant life. In 1592 he married a Protestant wife, Katherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire; she died before 1602. His talents were considerable, his will inflexible, and he possessed that singular power of attraction inherent in some persons. A portrait reputed to be his exists at Brockhall, near Ashby. "He was very wise," writes Gerard, "and of great judgment, though his utterance not so good. Besides, he was so liberal and apt to help all sorts, as