none, Meg?" demanded Lucrece in an injured tone.

"Oh ay! keep what thou hast," said Margaret, calmly munching the first
of her own three cakes.

"Who said I had any?"

"I said it. I know thee, as Father saith to Jack. Thou hast made thy
bed,--go lie thereon."

Lucrece marched slowly away, looking highly indignant; but before she
was quite out of sight, the others saw her slip her hand into her
pocket, bring out one of the little cakes, and bite it in two. Margaret
laughed when she saw Clare's look of shocked solemnity.

"I said she had them,--the sly-boots!" was her only comment.

Clare finished her cakes, and ran off to Barbara, who, seated under the
ash-tree, had witnessed the whole scene.

"Bab, I will not play me with yonder Lucrece. She tells lies, and is a
thief."

"Marry La'kin, my poor lamb!" sighed Barbara. "My mind sorely misgiveth
me that I have brought thee into a den of thieves. Eh me, if the good
Master had but lived a while longer! Of a truth, the Lord's ways be
passing strange."

Clare had run off again to Margaret, and the last sentence was not
spoken to her. But it was answered by somebody.

"Which of the Lord's ways, Barbara Polwhele?"

"Sir?" exclaimed Barbara, looking up surprisedly into the grave, though
kindly face of a tall, dark-haired man in clerical garb. "I was but--
eh, but yon eyes! 'Tis never Master Robin?"

Mr Tremayne's smile replied sufficiently that it was.

"And is yonder little Clare Avery?" he asked, with a tender inflection
in his voice. "Walter's child,--my brother Walter!"

"Ay, Master Robin, yon is Mistress Clare; and you being shepherd of this
flock hereaway, I do adjure you, look well to this little lamb, for I am
sore afeard she is here fallen amongst wolves."

"I am not the Shepherd, good friend,--only one of the Shepherd's
herd-lads. But I will look to the lamb as He shall speed me. And which
of the Lord's ways is so strange unto thee, Barbara?"

"Why, to think that our dear, good Master should die but now, and leave
the little lamb to be cast in all this peril."

"Then--`Some of the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth'--doth the
verse run thus in thy Bible, Barbara?"

"Nay, not so: but can you understand the same Master Robin?"

"By no means. Wherefore should I?"

Barbara made no answer beyond an appealing look.

"`He knoweth the way that I take.' If I know not so much as one step
thereof, what matter? I shall have light to see