r
Kenton's loud "How now, youngsters" they all were frightened, some ran
out headlong, some sneaked out at the little north door, and the
place was quiet, but in sad confusion and desolation, the altar-table
overthrown, the glass of the windows lying in fragments on the pavement,
the benches kicked over.

Kenton, with his boys' help, put what he could straight again, and
then somewhat to their surprise knelt down with bowed head, and said
a prayer, for they saw his lips moving. Then he locked up the church
doors, for the keys had been left in them, and slowly and sadly went
away.

"Thy mother would be sad to see this work," he said to Steadfast, as
he stopped by her grave. "They say 'tis done for religion's sake, but I
know not what to make of it."

The old Parish Clerk, North, had had a stroke the night after the
plunder of the church, and lay a-dying and insensible. His wife gave
his keys to Master Kenton, and on the following Sunday there was a
hue-and-cry for them, and Oates the father, the cobbler, a meddling
fellow, came down with a whole rabble of boys after him to the farm to
demand them. "A preacher had come out from Bristol," he said, "a captain
in the army, and he was calling for the keys to get into the church and
give them a godly discourse. It would be the worse for Master Kenton if
he did not give them up."

John had just sat down in the porch in his clean Sunday smock with the
baby on his knee, and Rusha clinging about him waiting till Stead had
cleaned himself up, and was ready to read to them from the mother's
books.

When he understood Gates' message he slowly said, "I be in charge of the
keys for this here parish."

"Come, come, Master Kenton, this wont do, give 'un up or you'll be made
to. Times are changed, and we don't want no parsons nor churchwardens
now, nor no such popery!"

"I'm accountable to the vestry for the church," gravely said Kenton.
"I will come and see what is doing, and open the church if so be as the
parish require it."

"Don't you see! The parish does--"

"I don't call you the parish, Master Gates, nor them boys neither," said
Kenton, getting up however, and placing the little one in the cradle, as
he called out to Patience to keep back the dinner till his return. The
two boys and Rusha followed him to see what would happen.

Long before they reached the churchyard they heard the sound of a
powerful voice, and presently they could see all the men and women of
the p