"I am a true son of the Church. I am no outcast--no heretic. But I will not suffer my soul to be starved. It is the law of this land that whatever creed men hold in their hearts--whether the tenets of Rome or those of the Puritans of Scotland--that they shall outwardly conform themselves to the forms prescribed by the Establishment, and shall attend the churches of the land; and you know as well as I do that there be many priests of our faith who bid their flocks obey this law, and submit themselves to the powers that be. And yet even with all this I would have restrained myself from such attendance, knowing that it is an abhorrence unto you, had there been any other way open to me of hearing the Word of God or receiving the Blessed Sacrament. But since King James has come to the throne, the penal laws have been more stringently enforced against our priests than in the latter days of the Queen. What has been the result for us? Verily that the priest who did from time to time minister to us is fled. We are left without help, without guidance, without teaching, and this when the clouds of peril and trouble are like to darken more and more about our path." "And what of that, rash boy? Would you think to lessen the peril by tampering with the things of the Evil One; by casting aside those rules and doctrines in which you both have been reared, and consorting with the subverters of the true faith?" "But I cannot see that they are subverters of the faith," answered the youth hotly. "That is where the kernel of the matter lies. I have heard their preachings. I have talked with my cousins at the Chase, who know what their doctrine is." But at these words the old man fairly gnashed his teeth in fury; he made a rush at his son and took him by the collar of his doublet, shaking him in a frenzy of rage. "So!" he cried, "so! Now we get at the whole heart of the matter. You have been learning heresy from those false Trevlyns at the Chase--those renegade, treacherous, time-serving Trevlyns, who are a disgrace to their name and their station! Wretched boy! have I not warned you times and again to have no dealings with those evil relatives? Kinsmen they may be, but kinsmen who have disgraced the name they bear. I would I had Richard Trevlyn here beneath my hand now, that I might stuff his false doctrine down his false throat to choke him withal! And to think that he has corrupted my son, as if the rearing of his own heretic brood was not enough!"