do not I," said Anne, "for now I can work for you."

He smiled faintly, and here Mr. Fellowes joined them; a good man
likewise, but intent on demonstrating the other side of the
question, and believing that the Popish, persecuting King had
forfeited his rights, so that there need be no scruple as to
renouncing what he had thrown up by his flight. It was an endless
argument, in which each man could only act according to his own
conscience, and endeavour that this conscience should be as little
biassed as possible by worldly motives or animosity.

Mr. Fellowes started at once with his servant for Walwyn, and Naomi
accompanied the two Woodfords to Portchester. In spite of the
cavalier sentiments of her family, Naomi had too much of the spire
of her Frondeur father to understand any feeling for duty towards
the King, who had so decidedly broken his covenant with his people,
and moreover had so abominably treated the Fellows of Magdalen
College; and her pity for Anne as a sufferer for her uncle's whim
quite angered her friend into hot defence of him and his cause.

The dear old parsonage garden under the gray walls, the honeysuckle
and monthly roses trailing over the porch, the lake-like creek
between it and green Portsdown Hill, the huge massive keep and
towers, and the masts in the harbour, the Island hills sleeping in
blue summer haze--Anne's heart clave to them more than ever for the
knowledge that the time was short and that the fair spot must be
given up for the right's sake. Certainly there was some trepidation
at the thought of the vault, and she had made many vague schemes for
ascertaining that which her very flesh trembled at the thought of
any one suspecting; but these were all frustrated, for since the war
with France had begun, the bailey had been put under repair and
garrisoned by a detachment of soldiers, the vault had been covered
in, there was a sentry at the gateway of the castle, and the postern
door towards the vicarage was fastened up, so that though the parish
still repaired to church through the wide court solitary wanderings
there were no longer possible, nor indeed safe for a young woman,
considering what the soldiery of that period were.

The thought came over her with a shudder as she gazed from her
window at the creek where she remembered Peregrine sending Charles
and Sedley adrift in the boat.

The tide was out, the mud glistened in the moonlight, but nothing
was to be seen more than An