le of humanity, partly by the harsh treatment
that he was continually bringing on himself. Preachings and prayers
to him only meant a time of intolerable restraint, usually ending in
disgrace and punishment; Scripture and the Westminster Catechism
contained a collection of tasks more tedious and irksome than the
Latin and Greek Grammar; Sunday was his worst day of the week, and
these repugnances, as he had been taught to believe, were so many
proofs that he was a being beyond the power of grace.

Mrs. Woodford scrupled to leave him to any one else on this first
Sunday of his recovered consciousness, and in hopes of keeping him
quiet through fatigue, she contrived that it should be the first day
of his being dressed, and seated in the arm-chair, resting against
cushions beside the open window, whence he could watch the church-
goers, Anne in her little white cap, with her book in one hand, and
a posy in the other, tripping demurely beside her uncle, stately in
gown, cassock, and scarlet hood.

Peregrine could not refrain from boasting to his hostess how he had
once grimaced from outside the church window at Havant, and at the
women shrieking that the fiend was there. She would not smile, and
shook her head sadly, so that he said, "I would never do so here."

"Nor anywhere, I hope."

Whereupon, thinking better to please the churchwoman, he related
how, when imprisoned for popping a toad into the soup, he had
escaped over the leads, and had beaten a drum outside the barn,
during a discourse of the godly tinker, John Bunyan, tramping and
rattling so that all thought the troopers were come, and rushed out,
tumbling one over the other, while he yelled out his "Ho! ho! ho!"
from the haystack where he had hidden.

"When you feel how kind and loving God is," said Mrs. Woodford
gravely, "you will not like to disturb those who are doing Him
honour."

"Is He kind?" asked Peregrine. "I thought He was all wrath and
anger."

She replied, "The Lord is loving unto every man, and His mercy is
over all His works."

He made no answer. If he were sullen, this subsided into
sleepiness, and when he awoke he found the lady on her knees going
through the service with her Prayer-book. She encountered his
wistful eyes, but no remark was made, though on her return from
fetching him some broth, she found him peeping into her book, which
he laid down hastily, as though afraid of detection.

She had to go down to the Sunday dinner,