answered Cherry quickly. "The only trouble will be that Aunt Susan
loves to drag me whither she knows I love not to go, and father
thinks that these wearisome discourses are for the saving of souls.
He will wish to take the twain of us. It must be ours to escape him
and abide at home."

"And how can we compass that?"

"For thee it will be easy," answered Cherry. "Thou must promise
Walter Cole to assist him with some task of printing or binding
that same evening, and tell my father that thou art not seasoned to
long discourses, and hast no desire to fill the room of another who
would fain hear the words of life from the notable man. There will
be more crowding to hear him than the room will hold, so that it
will be no idle plea on thy part. Once thou art gone I can yawn and
feign some sort of ache or colic that will make me plead to go to
bed rather than attend the preaching. Aunt Susan will scold and
protest it is but mine idleness and sinfulness in striving to avoid
the godly discourse; but father will not compel me to go. And when
all have started thou canst return, and we will together to the
wise woman; and be she never so long with her divinations, we shall
have returned long ere they have done, and none will know of the
visit."

Cuthbert agreed willingly to this plan. A bit of mischief and
frolic was as palatable to young folks in the seventeenth century
as it is in the nineteenth, and as a frolic those two regarded the
whole business. They were both full of curiosity about the wise
woman and her divinations, and it seemed to Cherry that to fail in
taking advantage of her skill when they had the chance of doing so
would be simple folly and absurdity. If she could read the secrets
of the future, surely she must be able to tell them somewhat of the
lost treasure.

Cherry's plan was carried out to the letter without the least real
difficulty, and without raising any suspicion. Martin Holt was not
particularly anxious that the exact locality of the underground
meeting place should be known to his nephew, who had not professed
himself by any means on the Puritan side as yet, though listening
with dutiful and heedful attention whenever his uncle spoke to him
on the matter of his tenets. As for Cherry, her dislike to sermons
had long been openly declared, and it was scarcely expected that
she would patiently endure another of the discourses that had
caused her such distaste before.

And so it came about that up