Grace should
desire to wit it."

"And his mother? Hath he sisters?"

"Good lack! ask at him when thou seest him. Alack, poor lad!--his work
is cut out, I see."

"But you have not told me what shall come of them."

"I told thee not! I have been answering thy questions thicker than any
blackberries. My tongue fair acheth; I spake not so much this week
past."

"How do you mock me, Father!"

"I will be sad as a dumpling, my lass. I reckon, Mistress, all they
shall be sent up to London unto the Council, without there come command
that the justices shall deal with them."

"And what shall be done to them?"

"Marry, an' I had my way, they should be well whipped all round, and
packed off to Spain. Only the galley-slaves, poor lads!--they could not
help themselves."

"Here 's the leech come, Master," said Jennet, behind them.

Sir Thomas hastened back into the house, and the two sisters followed
more slowly.

"Oh, behold Aunt Rachel!" said Blanche. "She will tell us somewhat."

Now, only on the previous evening, Rachel had been asserting, in her
strongest and sternest manner, that nothing,--no, nothing on earth!--
should ever make her harbour a Spaniard. They were one and all "evil
companions;" they were wicked Papists; they were perturbators of the
peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen; hanging was a luxury beyond their
deserts. It might therefore have been reasonably expected that Rachel,
when called upon to serve one of these very obnoxious persons, would
scornfully refuse assistance, and retire to her own chamber in the
capacity of an outraged Briton. But Rachel, when she spoke in this way,
spoke in the abstract, with a want of realisation. When the
objectionable specimen of the obnoxious mass lifted a pair of suffering
human eyes to her face, the ice thawed in a surprisingly sudden manner
from the surface of her flinty heart, and the set lips relaxed into an
astonishingly pitying expression.

Blanche, outwardly decorous, but with her eyes full of mischief, walked
up to Rachel, and desired to know how it fared with the Spanish
gentleman.

"Poor lad! he is in woeful case!" answered the representative of the
enraged British Lion. "What with soul and body, he must have borne
well-nigh the pangs of martyrdom this night. 'Tis enough to make one's
heart bleed but to look on him. And to hear him moan to himself of his
mother, poor heart! when he thinks him alone--at least thus I take his
words: I w