she turned to go, with
heavy Stephen in her arms: 'Here, give the babe to me,' she said,
'I'll care for him this forenoon. Thy mother managed to get a word
with me last night as the officers dragged her away, and I promised
her I would do what I could to help you, though you be Quakers and I
hold to the Church. See, he'll be safe in this cradle while you go and
play, though it is forty years and more since it held a babe of my
own.'

Very thankfully Dorcas laid Stephen, now sleeping peacefully, down in
the oaken cradle in the old woman's flagged kitchen. Then she ran off
to join the others assembled at a little distance from the orchard
gate. By this time a few more children had joined them: two or three
girls, and four or five older boys.

Where were they to meet? The sight of the closed house, and the sealed
gate, even the mention of the officers of the law, far from
frightening the children, had only made them more than ever clear
that, somewhere or other, the Meeting must be held.

At length one of the elder boys suggested 'My father's granary?' The
very place!--they all agreed: so thither the little flock of children
trooped. The granary was a large building of grey stone lighted only
by two mullioned windows high up in the walls. In Queen Elizabeth's
days these windows had lighted the small rooms of an upper storey, but
now the dividing floor had been removed to make more room for the
grain which lay piled up as high as the roof over more than half the
building. But, at one end, there was an empty space on the floor, and
here the children seated themselves on scattered bundles of hay.

Quietly Meeting began. At first some of the children peeped up at one
another anxiously under their eyelids. It felt very strange somehow to
be gathering together in silence alone without any grown-up people.
Were they really doing right? Dorcas' heart began to beat rather
nervously, and a hot flush dyed her cheek, until she looked across at
Hester sitting opposite, and was calmed by the peaceful expression of
the elder girl's face. Hester's hood had fallen back upon her
shoulders. Her fair hair, slightly ruffled, shone like a halo of pale
gold against the grey stone wall of the granary. Her blue eyes were
looking up, up at the blue sky, far away beyond the high window.

'Hester looks happy, almost as if she were listening to something,'
Dorcas said to herself, 'something that comforts her although we are
all sad.' Then, settl