CHAPTER TWO.: FATHER DAN.

FORTUNATELY FOR AGNES STONE, SHE was too low down in the world for many things to affect her which sorely troubled the occupants of the upper strata. Sumptuary laws were of no consequence to a woman whose best gown was patched with pieces of different colours, and who had not a hood in her possession; taxes and subsidies, though they might press heavily on the rich, were no concern of hers, for she did not own a penny; while no want, however complete, of letters, books, and newspapers, distressed the mind of one who had never learned the alphabet.

Mistress Winter dwelt in Cowbridge Street, otherwise Cow Lane; now the site of crowded City thoroughfares, but then a quiet, pleasant, suburban lane, the calm of which was chiefly broken by the presence, on market-days, of numbers of the animal whence the street took its name, caused by the close proximity of Smithfield. Green fields lay at the back of the houses, through which, on its way to the Thames, ran the little Fleet River, anciently known as the River of the Wells; beyond it towered the Bishop of Ely’s Palace, with its extensive walled garden, famous for strawberries; to the left was the pleasant and healthy village of Clerkenwell, whither the Londoners were wont to stroll on summer evenings, t