His tone was such that Ambrose could have believed him some devout
almost inspired hermit rather than the acute skilful artisan he
appeared at other times; and in fact, Tibble Steelman, like many
another craftsman of those days, led a double life, the outer one
that of the ordinary workman, the inner one devoted to those lights
that were shining unveiled and new to many; and especially here in
the heart of the City, partly from the influence of Dean Colet's
sermons and catechisings at St. Paul's, but also from remnants of
Lollardism, which had never been entirely quenched. The ordinary
clergy looked at it with horror, but the intelligent and thoughtful
of the burgher and craftsman classes studied it with a passionate
fervour which might have sooner broken out and in more perilous
forms save for the guidance it received in the truly Catholic and
open-spirited public teachings of Colet, in which he persisted in
spite of the opposition of his brother clergy.

Not that as yet the inquirers had in the slightest degree broken
with the system of the Church, or with her old traditions. They
were only beginning to see the light that had been veiled from them,
and to endeavour to clear the fountain from the mire that had fouled
it; and there was as yet no reason to believe that the aspersions
continually made against the mass priests and the friars were more
than the chronic grumblings of Englishmen, who had found the same
faults in them for the last two hundred years.

"And what wouldst thou do, young sir?" presently inquired Tibble.

"That I came to ask thee, good Tibble. I would work to the best of
my power in any craft so I may hear those words and gain the key to
all I have hitherto learnt, unheeding as one in a dream. My purpose