"Yet, my good woman," he said, in low, gentle tones, "yet is there not more comfort in love and forgiveness, than in revengeful wrath and hate?"
The old woman snatched away her hand and swayed to and fro, beating the floor with one foot and moaning softly.
"Oh, these priests, these priests," at last she broke out fiercely, "they wot not a tenth part of our woes, or they could not find it in their hearts to prate ever of love and forgiveness."
"I but seek to bring peace to thy heart," remonstrated Annys, "for peace can never enter save through love. Besides, how canst thou say the Lord's prayer? Doth it not say: 'Forgive us our sins, as we forgive them that have misdone against us'?"
"Nay!" returned the old woman, stubbornly, "I do pray to that God who said, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'"
He was about to touch on his favorite theme, the new spirit of Charity and Love that the Christ had brought into the sterner religion of the Old Testament, but now she burst forth even more vehemently, rising and tossing her arms high over her head.
"What is thy boasted religion that would take from an old woman her sole comfort?
"'Love mine enemies,' indeed! Does good God expect me to love that Baron de Leaufort—now suffering the torments of hell-fire, if ever sinner doth—who made merry within his castle, while my daughter, my beautiful, merry Rose, lay forgotten on the moat, brought there through him? And am I to love those lawmakers at Westminster who say that no man may move hand or foot to seek an honest living, but must stay rooted in the earth where he happened to grow, like a rotting trunk? Oh, yes, one may wander from Lincoln to London if it be but for merrymaking and foolishness; but no man may travel to the next county if it be to place bread between the teeth of his children. Bah! a fig care I for thy kind of religion! Begone, begone, with thy smooth tongue and thy sleek face, begone!"
But Annys did not go. Sighing heavily, he said: "My poor woman, take such comfort as is left to thee. I shall come again to-morrow and I shall teach thee such texts as thou wilt have. Indeed, I shall teach also thy granddaughter that she may aid thee. Be comforted, I pray thee," and, with a warm pressure of the hand, he was gone.
His heart was heavy that night. Was this, then, to be the end of placing the Bible in the hands of the people? Was their God to be a God of Vengeance and Wrath instead of Charity and Love? Instead of coming nearer Christ Jesus, were they to be further from Him than ever?