livelihood, I am so simply paid thereof that I fear me I shall be fain to borrow for myself, or else to break up household, or both." Yet the good Margaret keeps a great heart amidst these troubles, and counsels her son most righteously: "God visiteth you as it pleases Him in sundry wises: He would ye should know Him and serve Him better than ye have done before this time, and then He will send you more grace to do well in all other things; and for God's love remember it right well, and take it patiently, and thank God of his visitation; and if any thing have been amiss, any otherwise than it ought to have been before this, either in pride or in lavish expenses, or in any other thing that have offended God, amend it, and pray Him of His grace and help, and intend well to God and to your neighbours." Is not this a noble woman? It is in adversity that such natures are matured. She has had a hard life-struggle since old Sir William gave her that silk gown thirty years ago; but there is no weeping and wringing of hands with her. She has her work to do,-and she does it, though sometimes in a stern way, with slight pity for human infirmities. Evidently her belief is that "to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering." Let us look upon her under another aspect-the severe mother, exhibiting the harshness of the domestic relations between parent and child, yet in her secret heart most loving. This is a Shadow of a Reality.

Young Margery Paston is sitting in the accustomed solitude of the Brown Chamber in her mother's dowry house at Norwich. The chaplain, Sir James Gloys, has intercepted a letter addressed to Margery. The young lady is the object of constant anxiety and suspicion-watched—persecuted. Up to the age of twelve or fourteen she had seen little of her parents, but had been a welcome inmate in the family of Sir John Fastolf, at Caister ; who, in his caresses of the fair girl, indulged the strong affection which old men generally feel towards a playful and endearing child. He had no children of his own, and little Margery was therefore a real solace to the ancient warrior. There was another child, a few years older than Margery, who was admitted to play, and to learn out of the same book, with the daughter of the Pastons. This was Richard Calle, the only son of an honest and painstaking man, who acted in the capacity of a steward for Sir John Fastolf, and conducted many of the complicated affairs with which the old knight amused himself in the evening of a busy life-his friends complaining of "the yearly great damage he beareth in disbursing his money about shipping and boats, keeping a house up at Yarmouth to his great harm, and receiveth but chaffer and ware for his corns and his wools, and then must abide a long day to make money."

Richard Calle has now grown into manhood. He is reputed to have received a goodly inheritance from his father, which he has increased by provident

enterprises in trade. When the Pastons wanted money, he was once always to be applied to. But he has presumed to address his playfellow Margery with the language of affection; and though Sir John Paston had once said that, for his part, Richard Calle might have his dowerless sister and welcome, for he had always been a warm friend of the Pastons, his mother is indignant that a trader should presume to think of marrying into a gentle family; and John of Gelston, the second son, in an hour when the fortunes of the house seemed in the ascendant, has vowed that Richard Calle "should never have my good-will for to make my sister to sell candles and mustard at Framlingham."

Margery Paston sits in the Brown Chamber, with her bright blue eyes dimmed with tears. She is endeavouring to forget her own sorrows by reading a tale of imaginary griefs, which for four hundred years has never been read with a tearless eye. She is at that passage of 'The Clerk's Tale' of Chaucer, where Grisildis has her infant daughter taken from her, under pretence that it is to be put to death :

"But, at the last, to speaken she began,

And meekely she to the serjeant pray'd
(So as he was a worthy gentleman)

That she might kiss her child ere that it deid [died];
And in her barne [lap] this little child she laid

With full sad face, and 'gan the child to bliss,

And lulled it, and after 'gan it kiss."

The door of the chamber is hastily opened, and an old servant stands before Margery with a face

of affright. All in that household love the gentle maiden; and so the old man, seeing the tear in her eye, bids her be of good cheer, for though his worshipful mistress is now in a somewhat impatient humour, and demands her instant attendance in the Oaken Parlour, she is a good lady at heart, and would soon forgive any slight cause of offence.

Dame Paston has called in two aliies to constitute, with herself, the tribunal that is about to sit in judgment on Margery Paston. Dame Agnes Paston, the aged mother of the late heir of Caister, sits at the table with her daughter-in-law and the priest.

Margery enters; and, in a moment, is kneeling at the feet of her mother, with the accustomed reverence of child to parent. "Oh, minion," says the mother, "rise, I beseech you; it is not for such as you to kneel to a poor forlorn widow, left with few worldly goods. Mistress Calle has plenteousness all around her, and has nothing to ask of the world's gear. She has her good house at Framlingham, and her full store at Norwich. Mistress, know you the price of salted hams at this present? Are pickled herrings plenteous? We have some wool in loft, which we should not be unwilling to exchange for worsteds. How say you, Mistress Dry-goods; will you deal, will you chaffer?"

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My mother, what mean you?"

Oh, minion, you know full well my meaning.

You are an alien from your family. You are betrothed to a low trader, with no gentle blood in his veins."

"The good Sir William Paston, Knight, and whilom Judge of His Majesty's Court of the Common Pleas, would rise from his grave to save a grand-daughter of his from intermarrying with mustard and candle," quoth the ancient lady. "Faugh! a factor!"

"And one whom I shrewdly suspect to be a heretic,"

says the priest, looking earnestly at Mistress Margaret Paston.

Oh, my mother, why am I thus persecuted?" "Persecuted, forsooth!" responds the elder dame; "I took other rule with my daughters; and well do I remember that when Elizabeth Clere, my niece, tried to intercede with me for her wilful cousin Mary, forasmuch as she had been 'beaten once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice in a day, and had her head broke in several places,' I told her that it was for warning and ensample to all forward maidens who dared to think of love or marriage without their parents' guidance. And with the help of my worthy lord, the good Sir William Paston, Knight, and Judge of His Majesty's Court of the Common Pleas His Majesty Henry the Sixth gave him two robes and a hundred marks yearly; and may God him preserve upon his throne

The priest and Mistress Margaret drown the good old lady's somewhat disloyal gratitude (seeing

VOL. I.

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