e had been obliged to keep the
child, for very pity's sake, even if her late father's master had not
begged him to do so, and given an earnest of the payment.

Jeph laughed a little scornfully at the notion of a wild Cavalier ever
paying, but he was not barbarous, and allowed that there was no choice
in the matter, as she could not be turned out to starve. When he heard
that Stead had come with market produce he was displeased at it not
having been brought up for the table of his officers, assuring Stead
that they were not to be confounded with the roistering, penniless
malignants, who robbed instead of paying. Stead said he always supplied
Mistress Lightfoot, but this was laughed to scorn. "The rulers of the
army of saints had a right to be served first, above all before one who
was believed to harbour the idolater, even the priest of the groves."

Jeph directed that the next supply should come to the Deanery, as one
who had the right of ownership, and Stead submitted, only with the
secret resolve that Dr. Eales should not want his few eggs nor his pat
of fresh butter.

Jeph was not unkind to Stead, and took him to dine with the other
attendants of the officers in the very stone hall where he had eaten
that Christmas dinner some twenty months before. There was a very
long grace pronounced extempore, and the guests were stout, resolute,
grave-looking men, who kept on their steeple-crowned hats all the
time and conversed in low, deep voices, chiefly, as far as Stead could
gather, on military matters, but they seemed to appreciate good beef and
ale quite as much as any Cavalier trooper could have done. One of them
noticing Stead asked whether he had come to take service with the saints
and enjoy their dominion, but Jeph answered for him that his call lay at
home among those of his own household, until his heart should be whole
with the cause.

On the whole Stead was proud to see Jeph holding his own, though the
youngest among these determined-looking men. These two years had made
a man of the rough, idle, pleasure-loving boy, and a man after the
Ironsides' fashion, grave, self-contained, and self-depending. Stead had
been more like the elder than the younger brother in old times, but he
felt Jeph immeasurably his elder in the new, unfamiliar atmosphere; and
yet the boy had a strong sense that all was not right; that these were
interlopers in the kind old Dean's house; that the talk about Baal was
mere absurdity; and t