that led
to the little glen where the brook ran, and where was the cave that
Steadfast looked on as his special charge. Rusha, frightened by the loud
voices and angry gestures, had begun to cry, and beg she might not be
given to anyone, but stay with her Patty and Stead.

"And so you shall, my pretty," said Steadfast, sitting down on the stump
of a tree, and taking her on his knee, while Toby nuzzled up to them.

"Then you think we can go on keeping ourselves, and not letting them
part us," said Patience, earnestly. "If I have done the house work all
this time, and we have the fields, and all the beasts. We have only lost
the house, and I could never bear to live there again," she added, with
a shudder.

"No," said Steadfast, "it is too near the road while these savage
fellows are about. Besides--" and there he checked himself and added,
"I'll tell you, Patty. Do you remember the old stone cot down there in
the wood?"

"Where the old hermit lived in the blind Popish times?"

"Aye. We'll live there. No soldiers will ever find us out there, Patty."

"Oh! oh! that is good," said Patience. "We shall like that, shan't we,
Rusha?"

"And," added Steadfast, "there is an old cowshed against the rock
down there, where we could harbour the beasts, for 'tis them that the
soldiers are most after."

"Let us go down to it at once," cried the girl, joyfully.

But Steadfast thought it would be wiser to go first to the ruins of
their home; before, as he said, anyone else did so, to see what could be
saved therefrom.

Patience shrank from the spectacle, and Rusha hung upon her, saying the
soldiers would be there, and beginning to cry. At that moment, however,
Tom Gates' voice came near shouting for "Stead! Stead Kenton!"

"Come on, Stead. You'll be prentice-lad to Dick Stiggins the tailor, if
so be you bring Whitefoot and the geese for your fee; and Goodman Bold
will have the big wench; and Goody Grace will make shift with the little
ones, provided she has the kine!"

"We don't mean to be beholden to none of them," said Steadfast,
sturdily, with his hands in his pockets. "We mean to keep what belongs
to us, and work for ourselves."

"And God will help us," Patience added softly.

"Ho, ho!" cried Tom, and proud of having found them, he ran before them
back to the village green, and roared out, "Here they be! And they say
as how they don't want none of you, but will keep themselves. Ha! ha!"

Anyone who saw those four you