"I should not use such a thing as a help to devotion myself, Sister Dorothy," said my Father; "but what would you have me do?" "Help to devotion!" she exclaimed, "'Thou shalt not make any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing.' Sweep them away with the besom of destruction, and cast the idols to the moles and to the bats." "Sister Dorothy," he said, "you would not have me take a hammer, and axe, and cords, and drag this piece of painted work from the Lady Lucy's chamber before her eyes." "Thine eye shall not spare," she replied, solemnly. "But in the first place I must know that it is an idol to Lady Lucy," he said, "and that she does bow down to it." "Subtle distinctions, brother; traffickings with the enemy. Heaven grant they prove not our ruin, as of Jehoshaphat before us." For Aunt Dorothy, although she had forsaken the judgment seat for private offences, would still have deemed it an impiety to abandon it in cases of heresy. "Sister Dorothy," interposed Aunt Gretel, "in my country good men and women do use such things and do not become idolaters thereby in their private devotion and in the churches." "Belike they do, sister Gretel," rejoined Aunt Dorothy, drily. "The hand that would have pulled down the Epistle of St. James might well leave some idols standing. An owl sees better than a blind man. But it is no guide to those whose eyes are used to-day." This profane comparison of Dr. Luther to an owl dismayed Aunt Gretel, so as to throw her entirely out of the conflict, which finished with an ordinance from my Father that liberty of conscience should be the order of his household; and a protest from Aunt Dorothy that, be the consequences what they may, she would not suffer any immortal soul within her reach to go the broad road to ruin without warning. Which threat kept us in anxious anticipation. We took the greatest care not to leave the combatants alone; one so determined and the other so unconscious of danger. At last, however, the fatal moment arrived. It was early in April, a fortnight after Lady Lucy and Lettice took shelter under our roof. Dr. Anthony had arrived from London with tidings which made us all very uneasy. The Presbyterian majority in the House of Commons, believing the civil war ended, were very eager to disband the army which had ended it, but which, being mostly composed of Independents, they dreaded even more than the king. In February, they had voted that no officer under Sir Thomas Fairfax should hold any rank higher than a colonel, intending thereby to displace Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, Ludlow, Blake, Skippon, and Algernon Sydney, and, in short, every commander whom the army most trusted, and under whom their victories had been gained.