Indeed they
laughed at him for his poverty and scholarship, and called him Jack
Presbyter, Puritan, bookworm, and all the opprobrious names they
could think of, though no one ever less merited sectarian nicknames
than he, as far as doctrine went. For, bred up on Dr. Eales' books,
and obliged to look out on the unsettled state of religious matters,
he was as staunch a churchman as his brother, and fairly understood
the foundations of his faith. Poor boy, the check to his studies
disappointed him, and he spent every leisure moment over his Latin
accidence or in reading. Next to the stories in the Bible, he loved
the Maccabees, because of the likeness to the persecuted state of the
Church; and he knew the Morte d'Arthur almost by heart, and thought
it part of the history of England. Especially he loved the part that
tells of the Holy Grail, the Sacred Cup that was guarded by the
maimed King Pelles, and only revealed to the pure in heart and life.
Stead had fully confided to him the secret of the cave, in case he
should be the one left to deliver up the charge; and, in some strange
way, the boy connected the treasure with the Saint Grail, and his
brother with the maimed king.
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