ooked
uncomfortable; but there was no getting a moment's private
conversation with her before the coach was brought round again for
the completion of the journey. All that neighbourhood had a very
bad reputation as the haunt of lawless characters, prone to
violence; and though among mere smugglers there was little danger of
an attack on persons well known like the Woodford family, they were
often joined by far more desperate men from the seaport, so that it
was never desirable to be out of doors after dark.

The journey proved to have been too much for Mrs. Woodford's
strength, and for some days she was so ill that Anne never left the
house; but she rallied again, and on coming downstairs became very
anxious that her daughter should not be more confined by attendance
than was wholesome, and insisted on every opportunity of change or
amusement being taken.

One day as Anne was in the garden she was surprised by Peregrine
dashing up on horseback.

"You would not take the Queen's rosary before," he said. "You must
now, to save it. My father has smelt it out. He says it is
teraphim! Micah--Rachel, what not, are quoted against it. He would
have smashed it into fragments, but that Martha Browning said it
would be a pretty bracelet. I'd sooner see it smashed than on her
red fist. To think of her giving in to such vanities! But he said
she might have it, only to be new strung. When he was gone she
said, 'I don't really want the thing, but it was hard you should
lose the Queen's keepsake. Can you bestow it safely?' I said I
could, and brought it hither. Keep it, Anne, I pray."

Anne hesitated, and referred it to her mother upstairs.

"Tell him," she said, "that we will keep it in trust for him as a
royal gift."

Peregrine was disappointed, but had to be content.

A Dutch vessel from the East Indies had brought home sundry strange
animals, which were exhibited at the Jolly Mariner at Portsmouth,
and thus announced on a bill printed on execrable paper, brought out
to Portchester by some of the market people:--

"An Ellefante twice the Bignesse of an Ocks, the Trunke or Probosces
whereof can pick up a Needle or roote up an Ellum Tree. Also the
Royale Tyger, the same as has slaine and devoured seven yonge Gentoo
babes, three men, and two women at the township at Chuttergong, nie
to Bombay, in the Eastern Indies. Also the sacred Ape, worshipped
by the heathen of the Indies, the Dancing Serpent which weareth