id! and I'll do thee a good turn next time."

And Agatha fairly pushed Kate down the stairs, allowing her neither
excuse nor delay--a piece of undignified conduct which would bitterly
have scandalised Lady Foljambe, could she have seen it. By the time
that Kate returned with the articles prescribed, Agatha had possessed
herself of a lighted candle, wherein she burnt the end of the cork, and
with it proceeded to delineate, in the middle of the sheet, a very
clever sketch of a ferocious Turk, with moustaches of stupendous length.
Then elevating the long mop till it reached about a yard above her
head, she instructed Kate to arrange the sheet thereon in such a manner
that the Turk's face showed close to the top of the mop, and gave the
idea of a giant about eight feet in height.

"Now then--quick! I hear the old bumble-bee down alow yonder. Keep as
still as mice, and stir not, nor laugh for your lives!"

Kate appeared to have quite forgotten her trouble, and entered into
Agatha's mischievous fun with all the thoughtless glee of a child.

"Agatha," said Amphillis, "my Lady Foljambe should be heavy angered if
she wist thy dealing. Prithee, work not thus. If Father Jordan verily
believed thou wert a ghost, it were well-nigh enough to kill him, poor
sely old man. And he hath ill deserved such treatment at thine hands."

In the present day we should never expect an adult clergyman to fall
into so patent a trap; but in the Middle Ages even learned men were
credulous to an extent which we can scarcely imagine. Priests were in
the habit of receiving friendly visits from pretended saints, and
meeting apparitions of so-called demons, apparently without the faintest
suspicion that the spirits in question might have bodies attached to
them, or that their imaginations might be at all responsible for the
vision.

"Thank all the Calendar she's away!" was Agatha's response. "Thee hold
thy peace, and be not a spoil-sport. I mean to tell him I'm a soul in
Purgatory, and none save a priest named Jordan can deliver me, and he
only by licking of three crosses in the dust afore our Lady's altar
every morrow for a month. That shall hurt none of him! and it shall
cause me die o' laughter to see him do it. Back! quick! here cometh he.
I would fain hear the old snail skrike out at me, `Avaunt, Sathanas!'
as he surely will."

Amphillis stepped back. Her quicker ear had recognised that the step
beginning to ascend the stairs was no