this maiden, you being troth plight to her."

Stead assented.

"I will therefore not forbid it, trusting that if you be, as I hear,
a prudent youth, you may bring her to a more discreet and obedient
behaviour than hath been hers of late."

[Illustration: Stead before the Roundheads]

So saying, Mrs. Ayliffe joined company with the old Cavalier Colonel
and went on her way as Emlyn made that ugly face that Stead knew of old,
clenched her hand and muttered, "Old witch! She is a Puritan at heart,
after all! She is turning the house upside down, and my poor mistress
has not spirit to say 'tis her own, with the old woman and the old hunks
both against her! Why, she threatened to beat me because, forsooth, the
major's man was but giving me the time of day on the stairs!"

"Was that what she meant?" asked Stead.

"Assuredly it was. Trying to set you against me, the spiteful old
make-bate, and no one knows how long she will be here, falling on the
poor lads if they do but sing a song in the hall after supper, as if she
were a very Muggletonian herself. I trow she is no better."

"Did you not tell me how she held out her house against the Roundheads,
and went to prison for sheltering Cavaliers?"

"I only wish they had kept her there. All old women be Puritans at
heart. I say Stead, I'll have done with service. Let us be wed at once."

Stead could hardly breathe at this proposition. "But I have only nine
pounds and two crowns and--" he began.

"No matter, there be other ways," she went on. "Get the house built, and
I'll come, and we will have curds and whey all the summer, and mistress
and all her friends will come out and drink it, and eat strawberries!"

"But the Squire will never build the place up unless I bring more in
hand."

"You 'but' enough to butt down a wall, you dull-pated old Stead," said
Emlyn, "you know where to get at more, and so do I."

Stead's grey eyes fixed on her in astonishment and bewilderment.

"Numskull!" she exclaimed, but still in that good humoured voice of
banter that he never had withstood, "you know what I mean, though maybe
you would not have me say it in the street, you that have secrets."

"How do you know of it?"

"Have not I eyes, though some folk have not? Could not I look out at a
chink on a fine summer morning, when you thought the children asleep?
Could not I climb up to your precious cave as well as yourself; and hear
the iron clink under the stone. Ha, ha! and you and Pa