see, if so be you be alive to see it, as Heaven
grant, he will go off like the flame of a candle and nothing be left
in his place but a bit of a withered sting nettle. But come, my
sweetings, 'tis time I got your supper. I'll put some nice rosy-
cheeked apples down to roast, to be soft for Mistress Woodford's
sore mouth."

Before the apples were roasted, Charles Archfield and his cousin,
the colleger Sedley Archfield, a big boy in a black cloth gown, came
in with news of having--together with the other boys, including
Oliver and Robert Oakshott--hunted Peregrine all round the Close,
but he ran like a lapwing, and when they had pinned him up in the
corner by Dr. Ken's house, he slipped through their fingers up the
ivy, and grinned at them over the wall like the imp he was. Noll
said it was always the way, he was no more to be caught than a bit
of thistledown, but Sedley meant to call out all the college boys
and hunt and bait him down like a badger on 'Hills.'

CHAPTER II: HIGH TREASON

"Whate'er it be that is within his reach,
The filching trick he doth his fingers teach."

Robin Badfellow.

There was often a considerable distance between children and their
parents in the seventeenth century, but Anne Woodford, as the only
child of her widowed mother, was as solace, comfort, and companion;
and on her pillow in early morning the child poured forth in grave
earnest the entire story of the changeling, asking whether he could
not be "taken to good Dr. Ken, or the Dean, or the Bishop to be ex--
ex--what is it, mother? Not whipped with nettles. Oh no! nor burnt
with red hot pokers, but have holy words said so that the right one
may come back."

"My dear child, did you really believe that old nurse's tale?"

"O madam, she _knew_ it. The other old woman saw it! I always
thought fairies and elves were only in tales, but Lucy's nurse knows
it is true. And _he_ is not a bit like other lads, mamma dear. He
is lean and small, and his eyes are of different colours, look two
ways at once, and his mouth goes awry when he speaks, and he laughs
just like--like a fiend. Lucy and I call him Riquet a la Houppe,
because he is just like the picture in Mademoiselle's book, with a
great stubbly bunch of hair sticking out on one side, and though he
walks a little lame, he can hop and skip like a grasshopper, faster
than any of the boys, and leap up a wall in a moment, and grin--oh
most frightfully. Have you ever seen