The elder men who were with him were not thus agitated. Lucas’s convictions had not long been fixed. He did not court observation nor do anything unnecessarily to bring persecution on himself, but he quietly and secretly acted as an agent in dispersing the Lollard books and those of Erasmus, and lived in the conviction that there would one day be a great crash, believing himself to be doing his part by undermining the structure, and working on undoubtingly. Abenali was not aggressive. In fact, though he was reckoned among Lucas’s party, because of his abstinence from all cult of saints or images, and the persecution he had suffered, he did not join in their general opinions, and held aloof from their meetings. And Tibble Steelman, as has been before said, lived two lives, and that as foreman at the Dragon court, being habitual to him, and requiring much thought and exertion, the speculations of the reformers were to him more like an intellectual relaxation than the business of life. He took them as a modern artisan would in this day read his newspaper, and attend his club meeting. Ambrose, however, had the enthusiastic practicalness of youth. On that which he fully believed, he must act, and what did he fully believe? Boy as he was—scarcely yet eighteen—the toils and sports that delighted his brother seemed to him like toys amusing infants on the verge of an abyss, and he spent his leisure either in searching in the Vulgate for something to give him absolute direction, or in going in search of preachers, for, with the stirring of men’s minds, sermons were becoming more frequent.