"I know it."
"And with regard to other trials and temptations, are your companions good lads?"
Osric laughed aloud.
"No, grandfather, anything but that."
"And you?"
"I go to the good priest of St. Mary's to Confession, and that wipes it off."
"Nay, my child, not without penitence, and penitence is shown by ceasing to sin."
Now they had arrived at the rustic church of East-town, or Aston, on the slope of the old Roman camp, which uprose above the forest. Many woodsmen and rustics of the humble village were there. It was a simple service: rude village psalmody; primitive vestments and ritual, quite unlike the gorgeous scenes then witnessed in cathedral or abbey church, in that age of display. Osmund of Sarum had not made his influence felt much here, although the church was in the diocese he once ruled. All was of the old Anglo-Saxon type, as when Alfred was alive, and England free. There was not a Norman there to criticise; they shunned the churches to which the rustics resorted, and where the homilies were in the English tongue, which they would not trouble to learn.