"Thank you, father, but we were talking about the land, and you seemed to think that my Greek New Testament could have nothing to say about such a matter as English land. But we have in this new book not a set of dogmas, but the very teaching of Christ Himself, and He says that we should do to others as we would they should do to us if we were in their place. Now, father, if we were yeomen like the Rankins and the Clarks, who have been turned off the land, do you think we should like such treatment?"
Sir Thomas sat and gazed at his son with parted lips and widely opened eyes, as though he thought he was crazed. "Is—is this the new learning I have heard you talk about?" he managed to say at last, in a sneering tone.
"It is the new light God bath given to the world through the New Testament of Erasmus," said Miles, firmly.
"Then it will turn the world upside down, and must be resisted at all costs," said his father. "We owners of English land know nothing about this foreigner and his books, so you need not tell me anything about them."
"Father, father, but you call yourself a Christian man," said Miles, in a tone of protest.
"To be sure I am a good Christian. See what it hath cost me for candles for poor Jack's funeral; why—"
"But buying candles for Jack's funeral is altogether another matter," said Miles, quickly. "The Lady Audrey and her family would probably require that that should be done."
But Miles found that the Lady Audrey and her family were a disagreeable topic to his father just now, for he fumed, and fretted, and swore a good many oaths before he grew calm again, and then it was to say, "I have promised to pay a hundred pounds to the holy Fathers at the monastery to say Masses for him. What more would you have? If I am not a Christian man I should like to see one."
"My father, people in olden time were called Christians because they tried to follow the example of the Christ and live as He taught them they should, and the first commandment he gave them was to love, or do to, their neighbour as they would have the neighbour do to them if they could exchange places. This is to be a Christian man, and I have resolved to make this the rule of my life."
"Then I shall have to build an iron cage for you as they do for madmen," said his father, with a mocking smile, and yet there was a threatening look in his eye that made Miles recall the horror he had once seen, of a madman confined in such a cage in an outhouse on his own estate. It was the ordinary treatment dealt out to maniacs in that age, and it warned him to be careful how he acted just now, for, above all things, he must be able to prove that he was perfectly sane, and no madman, if he was to do anything to help those who had always been dependents of the Paton family.