esbyter, Puritan, bookworm, and all the opprobrious names they could
think of, though no one ever less merited sectarian nicknames than he,
as far as doctrine went. For, bred up on Dr. Eales' books, and obliged
to look out on the unsettled state of religious matters, he was
as staunch a churchman as his brother, and fairly understood
the foundations of his faith. Poor boy, the check to his studies
disappointed him, and he spent every leisure moment over his Latin
accidence or in reading. Next to the stories in the Bible, he loved
the Maccabees, because of the likeness to the persecuted state of the
Church; and he knew the Morte d'Arthur almost by heart, and thought it
part of the history of England. Especially he loved the part that tells
of the Holy Grail, the Sacred Cup that was guarded by the maimed King
Pelles, and only revealed to the pure in heart and life. Stead had fully
confided to him the secret of the cave, in case he should be the
one left to deliver up the charge; and, in some strange way, the boy
connected the treasure with the Saint Grail, and his brother with the
maimed king. So he worked very hard, and Patience was capable of a good
deal more than in her earlier days. Stead, helpless as he was, did
not require constant attendance, and knew too well how much was on his
sister's hands to trouble her when he could possibly help doing so. Thus
they rubbed on; though it was a terrible winter, and they often had to
break in on the hoard which was to have built the house, sometimes for
needments for the patient, sometimes to hire help when there was work
beyond the strength of Patience and Ben, who indeed was too slender to
do all that Stead had done.

Ben did not shine in going to market. He was not big enough to hold his
own against rude lads, and once came home crying with his donkey beaten
and his eggs broken; moreover, he was apt to linger at stalls of books
and broadsheets. As soon as Patience could venture to leave her brother,
she was forced to go to market herself; and there was a staidness and
sobriety about her demeanour that kept all impertinence at a distance.
Poor Patience, she was not at all the laughing rustic beauty that Emlyn
would have been at market. She would never have been handsome, and
though she was only a few years over twenty, she was beginning to look
weather-beaten and careworn, like the market women about her, mothers of
half-a-dozen children.

Now and then she saw Emlyn in all h