They know that you and Wat Tyler are pledged to wed. Stop crying, I beg you." This was wise advice, and Mary obeyed.

Then, striving hard to look cheerful," Happily the church is very near," she said; "and he is fleet as a deer, and he can find sanctuary there."

66

"Yes, yes, so he can," pursued the monk in an undertone. So keep a smiling face and let us go listen to the herb doctor over there. He has already a large audience; he can. cure every ailment. Come."

In a few minutes the monk was deeply interested in what the herb doctor, or herbalist, as he was commonly called, was saying. But Mary could not conceal her agitation. Did she recognize her lover's voice? He was standing on the stump of a tree, and spread out on the ground below him was a piece of cloth, on which were displayed very many different herbs, a certain cure for as many bodily ills.

"My good friends," he was saying, "I will teach you now a proper cure for small-pox if you will will listen. Will you listen? Take off your caps. Give ear; herb." *

look at this

Here let us say that we may reasonably believe that, only for Mary Gower, Wat Tyler might have lived many a long year to sell his medicines in different parts of the realm, and he and she might have dwelt long and happily together as man and wife. But Mary immediately recognized his voice, and he too must have betrayed his feelings when his eyes rested on her. One of the king's officers shrewdly guessed the cause of her emotion; and there was more than one officer on the lookout. Presently the sheriff sprang up behind the herb doctor, and jerking off his long, red wig, the runaway villein and thief stood revealed to the crowd. But a pedlar, who chanced to be close by, in an instant seized the sheriff's legs with the grip of a bull-dog, and in a moment the confusion and uproar became indescribable. The church was not a quarter of a mile away. "Run, run for the church!" cried a hundred voices. "Run, run!" And had there been only one bailiff at the goose market, all would have ended well for Wat Tyler; the sanctuary would have been gained in time. But too many bailiffs were closing in on him, and

Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, p. 179.

theatres then existed and the nobles had few better distractions (when they were not fighting the French or among themselves) than to listen to the gleeman recite some tale of King Arthur, or play on the vielle, which was a kind of fiddle,* while the people-the toiling, freedom-loving people-did love to hear him tell again the story of Robin Hood, whose heart had been with the poor, downtrodden Saxon. And let us say that the king's officers were generally on the lookout on these occasions, lest under the color of song or story the minstrel should give voice to over-liberal sentiments, and thus encourage the laborers to demand more privileges than they had already wrung from the upper class.†

The gleeman whom the pilgrim was watching was playing on his instrument with might and main, and around him stood a score of young men and maidens, all eager for a dance; their heads and arms were swaying to and fro to mark time with the music. But the dance did not begin, for the best dancer of them all was not present, and more than one voice was calling for Mary Gower, the miller's daughter from Oakham.

Well, yonder she is at the far end of the meadow.

"My child," spoke the monk with whom she is talking, "I do willingly forgive your lover for running off with my saddlebags, which Ethelwald, the hermit, has managed to restore to me; and I have resolved that if it is in my power to save him, he shall not be punished for the theft. But Wat Tyler, you know, is a villein bound to the soil; his name, moreover, is against him, for he is a grandson of the arch-rebel, Wat Tyler, and Baron de Courtenay vows that he will pursue him and hang him, not for what he did to me, but as a lesson to the other villeins on his manor."

"Well, only for his grandfather's dauntless spirit in the great uprising twenty years ago, there would not be to-day so many freeholders in the kingdom," answered Mary Gower. "Aye, 'tis a name to be proud of, and woe, woe to Baron de Courtenay if my Wat Tyler's is-" Here she broke down and began to cry.

"Stop! Your tears may be his ruin; they may put your betrothed in danger of his life," said the monk in an undertone. "The king's officers, no doubt, have their eyes on you.

They know that you and Wat Tyler are pledged to wed. Stop crying, I beg you." This was wise advice, and Mary obeyed.

Then, striving hard to look cheerful," Happily the church is very near," she said; "and he is fleet as a deer, and - he can find sanctuary there."

"Yes, yes, so he can," pursued the monk in an undertone. "So keep a smiling face and let us go listen to the herb doctor over there. He has already a large audience; he can cure every ailment. Come."

In a few minutes the monk was deeply interested in what the herb doctor, or herbalist, as he was commonly called, was saying. But Mary could not conceal her agitation. Did she recognize her lover's voice? He was standing on the stump of a tree, and spread out on the ground below him was a piece of cloth, on which were displayed very many different herbs, a certain cure for as many bodily ills.

"My good friends," he was saying, "I will teach you now a proper cure for small-pox if you will will listen. Will you listen? Take off your caps. herb." *

Give ear;

look at this

Here let us say that we may reasonably believe that, only for Mary Gower, Wat Tyler might have lived many a long year to sell his medicines in different parts of the realm, and he and she might have dwelt long and happily together as man and wife. But Mary immediately recognized his voice, and he too must have betrayed his feelings when his eyes rested on her. One of the king's officers shrewdly guessed the cause of her emotion; and there was more than one officer on the lookout. Presently the sheriff sprang up behind the herb doctor, and jerking off his long, red wig, the runaway villein and thief stood revealed to the crowd. But a pedlar, who chanced to be close by, in an instant seized the sheriff's legs with the grip of a bull-dog, and in a moment the confusion and uproar became indescribable. The church was not a quarter of a mile away. "Run, run for the church!" cried a hundred voices. "Run, run!" And had there been only one bailiff at the goose market, all would have ended well for Wat Tyler; the sanctuary would have been gained in time. But too many bailiffs were closing in on him, and

*Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, p. 179.

In those days very little was thought of a hanging; it was too common a sight. And on the gibbet the body was left to swing to and fro in the wind, while at night the wolves would come and howl and try to spring up at the ghastly object not many feet above them. It was thus with poor Wat Tyler's body. And he was soon forgotten; only one villein the less on Baron de Courtenay's manor. What became of Mary Gower no one ever knew. But the hermit Ethelwald believed that the cries he used to hear in the forest were her cries. Never in his lonely life had he heard anything so mournful, nor so unearthly.

PROFESSOR HARNACK AND THE GOSPEL.

BY REVEREND FATHER CUTHBERT, O.S.F.C.

II.

E pass now to Professor Harnack's second aspect of the Gospel.

As the whole message of Jesus Christ can be summed up in the announcement of a direct

and unique relationship between God and the soul, so also, he says, it can be summed up again in the idea of the Fatherhood of God and the infinite value of the human soul. And it is in this idea that he discovers the clearest and most direct significance of our Lord's message. "To our modern way of thinking and feeling," he tells us, "Christ's message appears in the clearest and most direct light when grasped in connection with the idea of God the Father and the infinite value of the human soul. Here the elements which I would describe as the restful and rest-giving in Jesus' message, and which are comprehended in the idea of our being children. of God, find expression." He goes on to say: "The fact that the whole of Jesus' message may be reduced to these two heads-God the Father and the human soul so ennobled that it can and does unite with him-shows that the Gospel is in nowise a positive religion like the rest; that it contains statutory or particularistic elements; that it is, therefore, religion itself. It is superior to all antithesis and tension between this world and a world to come, between reason and ecstasy, between work and isolation from the world, between Judaism and Hellenism. It can dominate them all, and there is no factor of earthly life to which it is confined or necessarily tied down." *

Did this passage stand by itself we could unhesitatingly accept it as the utterance of a Catholic mind. In a sense the whole Gospel may be said to centre the revelation of the Fatherhood of God; and the ultimate expression of the religious spirit may be summed up in the opening words of the Lord's Prayer: Our Father who art in heaven.