on him, "'tis your
conscience, Master, as doesn't agree with you."

CHAPTER TEN.

TRYING EXPERIMENTS.

Old Grandfather Hall had got a lift in a cart from Frittenden, and came
to spend the day with Roger and Christabel. It was a holy-day, for
which cause Roger was at home, for in those times a holy-day was always
a holiday, and the natural result was that holiday-making soon took the
place of keeping holy. Roger's leisure days were usually spent by the
side of his little Christie.

"Eh, Hodge, my lad!" said Grandfather Hall, shaking his white head, as
he sat leaning his hands upon his silver-headed staff, "but 'tis a
strange dispensation this! Surely I never looked for such as this in
mine old age. But 'tis my blame--I do right freely confess 'tis my
blame. I reckoned I wrought for the best; I meant nought save my maid's
happiness: but I see now I had better have been content with fewer of
the good things of this life for the child, and have taken more thought
for an husband that feared God. Surely I meant well,--yet I did evil; I
see it now."

"Father," said Roger, with respectful affection, "I pray you, remember
that God's strange dispensations be at times the best things He hath to
give us, and that of our very blunders He can make ladders to lift us
nearer to Himself."

"Ay, lad, thou hast the right; yet must I needs be sorry for my poor
child, that suffereth for my blunder. Hodge, I would thou wouldst visit
her."

"That will I, Father, no further than Saint Edmund's Day, the which you
wot is next Tuesday. Shall I bear her any message from you?"

Old Mr Hall considered an instant; then he put his hand into his purse,
and with trembling fingers pulled out a new shilling.

"Bear her this," said he; "and therewithal my blessing, and do her to
wit that I am rarely troubled for her trouble. I cannot say more, lest
it should seem to reflect upon her husband: but I would with all mine
heart--"

"Well, Nell!" said a voice in the passage outside which everybody knew.
"Your master's at home, I count, being a holy-day? The old master here
likewise?--that's well. There, take my pattens, that's a good maid.
I'll tarry a bit to cheer up the little mistress."

"Oh dear!" said Christabel in a whisper, "Aunt Tabitha won't cheer me a
bit; she'll make me boil over. And I'm very near it now; I'm sure I
must be singing! If she'd take me off and put me on the hob! Aunt
Alice would, if it were she."

"Goo