ringing through a Notting Dale mission-hall moved him to demand his birthright of family history. “Well, I’ll tell you, Michael,” said his mother at last. “Your father ought to have been the Earl of Saxby—only—something went wrong—some certificate or something.” “An Earl?” cried Michael, staggered by the splendid news. “But—but, mother, we met Lord Saxby. Who was that?” “He’s a relation. Only, please don’t tell people about this, because they wouldn’t understand. It’s all very muddled and difficult.” “My father ought to have been Lord Saxby? Why wasn’t he? Mother, was he illegitimate?” “Michael, how can you talk like that? Of course not.” Michael blushed because his mother blushed. “I’m sorry, mother, I thought he might have been. People are. You read about them often enough.” Michael decided that as he must not tell Chator, Martindale and Rigg the truth, he would, at any rate, join himself on to the House of Saxby collaterally. To his disappointment, he discovered that the only reference in history to an Earl of Saxby made out that particular one to be a most pestilent Roundhead. So Michael gave up being the Legitimist Earl of Saxby, and settled instead to be descended through the indiscretion of an early king from the Stuarts. Michael grew more and more ecclesiastical as time went on. He joined several Jacobite societies, and accompanied Mr. Prout on the latter’s London visit to a reception at Clifford’s Inn Hall in honour of the Legitimist Emperor of Byzantium. Michael was very much impressed by kissing the hand of an Emperor, and even more deeply impressed by the Scottish piper who marched up and down during the light refreshment at one shilling a head afterwards. Mr. Prout, accompanied by Michael, Chator, Martindale and Rigg, spent the Sunday of his stay in town by attending early Mass in Kensington, High Mass in Holborn, Benediction in Shoreditch and Evensong in Paddington. He also joined several more guilds, confraternities and societies and presented Michael with one hair from the five hairs he possessed of a lock of Prince Charlie’s hair (authentic) before he returned to Bournemouth. This single hair was a great responsibility to Michael, until he placed it in a silver locket to wear round his neck. During that year occurred what the papers called a Crisis in the Church, and Michael and his three friends took in every week The Church Times, The Church Review, The English Churchman, Church Bells, The Record and The Rock in order to play their part in the crisis. They attended Protestant meetings to boo and hiss from the gallery or to applaud violently gentlemen on their side who rose to ask the lecturer