For the Faith | Page 2

end, and
held disputations with many learned men, and never have I been proven
to be in the wrong."
"I trow you are right there, John Clarke," spoke a deep voice from out
the shadows of the room at the far end, away from the long, mullioned
window. "I have ever maintained that our Mother the Holy Church is a
far more merciful and gentle and tolerant mother than those who seek
to uphold her authority, and who use her name as a cloak for much
maliciousness and much ignorance."
Clarke turned swiftly upon the speaker, whose white head could be
plainly distinguished in the shadows of the panelled room. The features,
too, being finely cut, and of a clear, pallid tint, stood out against the
dark leather of the chair in which the speaker sat. He was habited,
although in his own house, in the academic gown to which his long
residence in Oxford had accustomed him. But it was as a Doctor of the
Faculty of Medicine that he had distinguished himself; and although of
late years he had done little in practising amongst the sick, and spent
his time mainly in the study of his beloved Greek authors, yet his skill
as a physician was held in high repute, and there were many among the
heads of colleges who, when illness threatened them, invariably
besought the help of Dr. Langton in preference to that of any other
leech in the place. Moreover, there were many poor scholars and
students, as well as indigent townsfolk, who had good cause to bless his
name; whilst the faces of his two beautiful daughters were well known
in many a crowded lane and alley of the city, and they often went by
the sobriquet of "The two saints of Oxford."
This was in part, perhaps, due to their names. They were twin girls, the

only children of Dr. Langton, whose wife had died within a year of
their birth. He had called the one Frideswyde, after the patron saint of
Oxford, at whose shrine so many reputed miracles had been wrought;
and the other he named Magdalen, possibly because he had been
married in the church of St. Mary Magdalen, just without the North
Gate.
To their friends the twin sisters were known as Freda and Magda, and
they lived with their father in a quaint riverside house by Miltham
Bridge, where it crossed the Cherwell. This house was a fragment of
some ecclesiastical building now no longer in existence, and although
not extensive, was ample enough for the needs of a small household,
whilst the old garden and fish ponds, the nut walk and sunny green
lawn with its ancient sundial, were a constant delight to the two girls,
who were proud of the flowers they could grow through the summer
months, and were wont to declare that their roses and lilies were the
finest that could be seen in all the neighbourhood of Oxford.
The room in which the little company was gathered together this clear,
bright April evening was the fragment of the old refectory, and its
groined and vaulted roof was beautifully traced, whilst the long,
mullioned window, on the wide cushioned seat on which the sisters sat
with arms entwined, listening breathlessly to the talk of their elders,
looked southward and westward over green meadowlands and
gleaming water channels to the low hills and woodlands beyond.
Oxford in the sixteenth century was a notoriously unhealthy place,
swept by constant pestilences, which militated greatly against its
growth as a university; but no one could deny the peculiar charm of its
situation during the summer months, set in a zone of verdure, amid
waterways fringed with alder and willow, and gemmed by water plants
and masses of fritillary.
Besides the two sisters, their learned father, and the two young men in
the garb of students who had already spoken, there was a third youth
present, who looked slightly younger than the dark faced, impetuous
Anthony Dalaber, and he sat on the window seat beside the daughters
of the house, with the look of one who has the right to claim intimacy.

As a matter of fact, Hugh Fitzjames was the cousin of these girls, and
for many years had been a member of Dr. Langton's household. Now
he was living at St. Alban Hall, and Dalaber was his most intimate
friend and comrade, sharing the same double chamber with him. It was
this intimacy which bad first brought Anthony Dalaber to the Bridge
House; and having once come, he came again and yet again, till he was
regarded in the light of a friend and comrade.
There was a very strong tie asserting itself amongst certain men of
varying ages and academic rank at Oxford at this time. Certain
publications