Maud ventured to look up in a minute or
two, and saw a venerable-looking old woman standing on the threshold,
looking very pale and ill, and quite as frightened as she herself did.

[Illustration: DAME COPPINS.]

But the old woman was the first to recover herself, and she said, "You
have come to tell me about Master Harry Drury? The Lord reward you for
your kindness to a poor old woman."

Maud hardly knew what to say. She felt ashamed of her fright now, and
yet an idea had entered her head that Cavalier could see Harry in the
cottage, and she said, "Nay, but I have come to ask _you_ about Harry."

The poor old woman trembled visibly when she heard this. "Prithee, but I
cannot tell you that," she said, speaking as calmly as she could. "I
have not seen him these three days," she went on, "and sorely have I
missed him, for not a word of the Book can I read now. He's been eyes to
me ever since my own boy went away to fight for the King."

"What book did he read to you?" asked Maud.

"Marry, and what should it be but God's word?" said Dame Coppins. "It's
been open at the place where he left off these three days, for it is
sore hard to believe I sha'n't hear his voice again." Tears choked the
old woman here, and Maud, quite forgetting her reputation as a witch,
jumped off her horse, saying, "Shall I read a chapter for you, as Harry
used?"

"Then it is true he's gone away?" said the old woman.

Maud nodded. The tears were in her eyes now. "We don't know where he has
gone," she said.

"Poor lamb, it is a sore trial for you; but it will be worse for me, I
trow," and the old woman sighed heavily.

"Why?" asked Maud, entering the cottage, where, on a little table lay a
Bible open at the Gospel of St. John. There was nothing remarkable in
this book, she knew, for she recognised it as an old one of Harry's,
which they had read from together many times, until she gave him a new
one on his birthday once, when the old one disappeared.

After she had read part of the sixth chapter, the old woman begged for a
few verses more about the "mansions," and Maud read part of the
fourteenth.

"I'll keep that in mind when the time comes," murmured the old woman;
"and if I never see you again, Mistress Harcourt----"

"But I will come and see you again," interrupted Maud.

The old woman shook her head. "It'll be all over soon; I couldn't bear
it again," she said.

"What will be all over?" asked Maud. "You are not ill, are--at lea