And besides, there was, at this period, with some of the Puritans, a hope of peacefully affecting some slight further reformation, so that even Aunt Dorothy was less controversial than usual; contenting herself with an occasional warning against going down to Egypt for horses, or against Achans in the camp, and an occasional hope that, while his words were smoother than butter, the enemy had not war in his heart. But she did not distinctly explain whether by these Achans and Egyptian cavalry she meant Mr. Nicholls, Placidia, Lady Lucy, Lettice and the king; or, on the other hand, the little band of Separatists or Brownists whom we met from time to time coming from their worship in a cottage on the outskirts of the village, against whom she considered my Father not a little remiss in his magisterial duty. These apparently inoffensive people were suspected of Anabaptist tendencies. Aunt Gretel even associated them in her own mind with some very dangerous characters of the same name at Münster. It was, indeed, the utmost stretch of her toleration, to connive at our Bob and Tib's occasional attendance at their assemblies; but the consideration of Tib's discreet years, and Bob's discreet character, and Aunt Dorothy's somewhat indiscreet zeal, had hitherto induced her to do so, her conscience being further fortified by my Father's solemn promise to bring these sectaries to justice if ever they showed the slightest tendency towards polygamy or homicide. They consisted chiefly of small freeholders and independent hand-workers, the tailor, the village carpenter, and at the head, Job Forster, the blacksmith; Tib and Bob were, I think, the only household servants among them. They were few, poor, and quiet, doing nothing at their meetings, it seemed, but read the Bible, listen to one reading or explaining it, and praying: some among them having scruples as to whether it might not be a carnal indulgence to sing hymns. Occasionally they were strengthened by the visit of a preacher of their way of thinking from Suffolk, where the sect was more numerous. They were good to each other; not hurtful to any one else. They would certainly, every one of them, have died or gone into destitute exile for the minutest scruple of their belief or disbelief, being satisfied that every thread of the broidered work of their tabernacle was as divinely ordered as the tables of the law written with the finger of God. But as yet there was nothing to show what their enthusiasm would do when it was enkindled to action, instead of smouldering in passive endurance; nothing to show what germs of vigorous life lay dormant in that little company, each holding his commission, as he believed, direct from God. Yet from these, and such as these, at the touch of Oliver Cromwell, sprang into life that crop of Ironsides terrible as Samsons, chaste as Sir Galahad, unyielding as Elijah before the threats of Jezebel, unsparing as