The FitzHerberts, the Babingtons, the Fentons--these, with their servants and guests, accounted for perhaps half of the folk.

From the shadow by the door peeped out the faces of John Merton and his wife and son; beneath the window was the solemn face of Mr.Manners the lawyer, with his daughter beside him, Robin Audrey beside her, and Dick his servant behind him.

Surely, thought the young priest, the Faith could not be in its final decay, with such a gathering as this.
His little sermon was plain enough for the most foolish there.

He spoke of Christ's Resurrection; of how death had no power to hold Him, nor pains nor prison to detain Him; and he spoke, too, of that mystical life of His which He yet lived in His body, which was the Church; of how Death, too, stretched forth his hands against Him there, and yet had no more force to hold Him than in His natural life lived on earth near sixteen hundred years ago; how a Resurrection awaited Him here in England as in Jerusalem, if His friends would be constant and courageous, not faithless, but believing.
"Even here," he said, "in this upper chamber, where we are gathered for fear of the Jews, comes Jesus and stands in the midst, the doors being shut.

Upon this altar He will be presently, the Lamb slain yet the Lamb victorious, to give us all that peace which the world can neither give nor take away." And he added a few words of exhortation and encouragement, bidding them fear nothing whatever might come upon them in the future; to hold fast to the faith once delivered to the saints, and so to attain the heavenly crown.