They were at the Rectory gates now, and people were seen in all their Sunday trim hurrying towards the field where the tilting match was to take place. Mary turned towards the square, on either side of which stood the old timbered houses by the lych gate, and asked a man she knew, if the horsemen who were to tilt in the field were to pass that way. 'For,' she added, 'I would fain wait here till they have ridden on. I might get into danger with the child from the horses' feet.' 'Better have a care, mistress,' was the reply, and he added; 'scant blessings come to those who turn Sunday into a day of revelry.' 'Ah!' said another voice, 'you be one of the saints, Jeremy; but why be hard on country folk for a little merry-making, when the Queen and all the grand nobles and ladies do the same, so I've heard, at Court.' 'I tell you,' was the reply, 'it's the old Popish custom--mass in the morning, and feasting and revelling all the rest of the day. I tell you, it is these licences which make the Nonconformists our bitter foes.' 'Foes!' the other said. 'Ay, there's a pack of 'em all round. Some seen, some unseen--Papists and Puritans--but, thank the stars, I care not a groat for either. I am contented, any way. Saint or sinner, Puritan or Papist, I say, let 'em alone, if they'll let me alone.' 'Ay, there's the rub,' said the other, 'there's no letting alone. You and I may live to see the fires kindled again, and burn ourselves, for that matter.' [Illustration: OLD HOUSES BY THE LYCH GATE, PENSHURST.] 'I sha'n't burn. I know a way out of that. I watch the tide, and turn my craft to sail along with it.' And this easy-going time-server, of whom there are a good many descendants in the present day, laughed a careless laugh, and then, as the sound of horses' feet was heard, and that of the crowd drawing near, he good-naturedly lifted Ambrose on his shoulder, and, planting his broad back against the trunk of the great overshadowing elm, he told the boy to sit steady, and he would carry him to the wall skirting the field, where he could see all that was going on. Mary Gifford followed, and, feeling Ambrose was safe, was glad he should be gratified with so little trouble and risk. She rested herself on a large stone by the wall, Ambrose standing above her, held there by the strong arm of the man who had befriended them. The tilt was not very exciting, for many of the best horses and men had been called into requisition by the gentry of the neighbourhood, for the far grander and more important show to come off at Whitehall in the following week. The spectators, however, seemed well satisfied, to judge by their huzzas and cheers which hailed the victor in every passage of arms--cheers in which little Ambrose, from his vantage ground, heartily joined.