They were, in several places, dismantled of their shelves, and otherwise
broken and damaged, and were, moreover, mantled with cobwebs and covered
with dust.

"The men who wrote these books," said Lambourne, looking round him,
"little thought whose keeping they were to fall into."

"Nor what yeoman's service they were to do me," quoth Anthony Foster;
"the cook hath used them for scouring his pewter, and the groom hath had
nought else to clean my boots with, this many a month past."

"And yet," said Lambourne, "I have been in cities where such learned
commodities would have been deemed too good for such offices."

"Pshaw, pshaw," answered Foster, "'they are Popish trash, every one
of them--private studies of the mumping old Abbot of Abingdon. The
nineteenthly of a pure gospel sermon were worth a cartload of such
rakings of the kennel of Rome."

"Gad-a-mercy, Master Tony Fire-the-Fagot!" said Lambourne, by way of
reply.

Foster scowled darkly at him, as he replied, "Hark ye, friend Mike;
forget that name, and the passage which it relates to, if you would not
have our newly-revived comradeship die a sudden and a violent death."

"Why," said Michael Lambourne, "you were wont to glory in the share you
had in the death of the two old heretical bishops."

"That," said his comrade, "was while I was in the gall of bitterness and