d very anxiously, and so did Stead, while relieving Whitefoot
of her panniers and giving her a rub down before turning her out to get
her supper.

It was not long however before Kenton and Jeph both appeared, the one
looking sad, the other sulky. "Too late," Jeph muttered, "and father
won't let me go to see the sport."

"Sport, d'ye call it?" said Kenton. "Aye, Stead, you may well gape at
what we have seen--our good parson with his feet tied to his stirrups on
a sorry nag, being hauled off to town like a common thief!"

"Oh!" broke from the children, and Patience ventured to ask, "But what
for, father?"

"They best know who did it," said the Churchwarden. "Something they said
of a scandalous minister, as though his had not ever been a godly life
and preaching. These be strange times, children, and for the life of me,
I know not what it all means. How now, Jeph, what art idling there
for? There's the waggon to be loaded for to-morrow with the faggots I
promised Mistress Lightfoot."

Jeph moved away, murmuring something about fetching up the cows, to
which his father replied, "That was Steadfast's work, and it was not
time yet."

In fact Jeph was very curious to know what was going on in the village.
If there was any kind of uproar, why should not he have his part in
it? It was just like father to hinder him, and he had a great mind to
neglect the faggots and go off to the village. He was rather surprised,
and a good deal vexed to see his father walking along on the way to the
pasture with Steadfast.

It was for the sake of saying "Aye, boy, best not go near the sorry
sight! They would not let good Master Holworth speak with me; but I
saw he meant to warn me to keep aloof lest Tim Green or the like should
remember as how I'm Churchwarden."

"Did they ask after those things?" inquired Steadfast in a lowered
voice.

"I can't say. But on your life, lad, not a word of them!"

After work was done for the evening, Jeph and Stead were too eager
to know what had happened to stay at home. They ran across the bit of
moorland to the village street and the grey church, whose odd-shaped
steeple stood up among the trees. Already they could see that the great
west window was broken, all the glass which bore the picture of the Last
Judgment, and the Archangel Michael weighing souls in the balance was
gone!

"Yes," said Tom Oates, leaping over two or three tombstones to get to
them. "'Twas rare sport, Jeph Kenton. Why were