mall sticks heaped over it; roasted
eggs, excellent butter and milk. She apologised for not having dared
to fetch any ale for fear of exciting suspicion, but the doctor set her
quite at ease by his manifest enjoyment of her little feast, declaring
that he had not made so good a meal since Bristol was taken.

Then he catechised the children. Little Ben could say the Lord's Prayer,
the Belief, and some of the shorter Commandments, and the doctor patted
his little round white cap, and gave him two Turkey figs as a reward.

Jerusha, when she got over her desperate fright enough to speak above a
whisper, was quite perfect from her name down to "charity with all men,"
but Emlyn stumbled horribly over even the first answers, and utterly
broke down in the Fourth Commandment; but she smiled up in the doctor's
face in her pretty way, and blushed as she said "The chaplain at
Blythedale had taught us so far, your reverence."

"And have you learnt no further?"

"If you were here to teach me, sir, I would soon learn it," said the
little witch, but she did not come over him as she did with most people.

"You have as good an instructor as I for your needs, in this discreet
maiden," said Dr. Eales, and as something of a pout descended on
the sparkling little face, "when you know all the answers, perchance
Steadfast here may bring you to my lodgings and I will hear you."

"I could learn them myself if I had the book," said Emlyn.

The fact being that the Catechism was taught by Patience from memory
in those winter evenings when all went to bed to save candle light, but
that when Steadfast retired to the cow-house, Emlyn either insisted
on playing with the others or pretended to go to sleep; and twitted
Patience with being a Puritan. However, the hopes of going into Bristol
might be an incentive, though she indulged in a grumble to Rusha, and
declared that she liked a jolly chaplain, and this old doctor was not a
bit better than a mere Puritan.

Rusha opened her big eyes. She never did understand Emlyn, and perhaps
that young maiden took delight in shocking her. They were ordered off to
bed much sooner than they approved on that fair summer night, when the
half-moon was high and the nightingales were singing all round--not that
they cared for that, but there was a sense about them that something
mysterious was going on, and Emlyn was wild with curiosity and vexation
at being kept out of it.

She would have kept watch and crept ou