CHAPTER III: A Neophyte.
"And the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and he loved him as his own soul." These words often came into the mind of the priest, Thomas Garret, during the three days which Anthony Dalaber spent at his house, hard by the rushing river, in the city of London.
There were ten years in age between them.

Dalaber was a youth who had seen little of life beyond what he had learned in Oxford, whereas Garret had already passed through strange and perilous experiences.

The one had so far lived amongst books, and with youthful companions of his own standing; the other had been a pioneer in one of the most dangerous movements of the day, and had seen what such courses might well lead him to.

Storm and stress had been the portion of the one, a pleasant life of study and pleasure that of the other.

It was only during the past six months that association with Clarke and some others of his way of thinking had aroused in Dalaber's mind a sense of restless discontent with existing ordinances, and a longing after purer, clearer light, together with a distaste and ofttimes a disgust at what he saw of corruption and simony amongst those who should have been the salt of the earth.
Had it not been for the talks he had heard of late, in Dr.
Langton's house, he might have passed through his divinity studies at Oxford as his brother had done before him, content to drift with the stream, ignorant of the undercurrents which were already disturbing its apparently tranquil surface, and ready in due course to be consecrated to his office, and to take some benefice if he could get it, and live and die as the average priest of those times did, without troubling himself over the vexed questions of papal encroachment and traffic in pardons and indulgences which were setting Germany in a flame.
But he had been first aroused by seeing the light in Freda's eyes as these questions had been discussed in the hearing of her and her sister.