“We pay for our garden and our mill,” said Oliver. “We wrong nobody, and we work for our living, and you are a very cruel man.”

“You pay the king: and the parliament does not choose that the king should have any more money to spend against them. Mind you that, boy! And—”

“I am sure I don’t know anything about the king and the parliament, or any such quarrels,” said Oliver. “It is very hard to punish us for them, it is very cruel.”

“You shall have reason to call me cruel twenty times over, if you don’t get away out of our carr,” said Stephen. “Manure your garden, indeed! Not I! And you shall not manure another yard in these Levels. Come here, Roger.”

They went out again into the yard, and Oliver, now quite overcome, laid down his head on his arms, and cried bitterly.

“Here’s your cup, however,” said Ailwin, now released by Roger’s being employed elsewhere. “This bit of plaster is the only thing they have laid hands on that they have not ruined.” Oliver started up, and hid his work and tools in a bundle of straw, in the corner of the kitchen.

“What Mildred will say, I don’t know,” said Ailwin. “That boy has wrung the neck of her white hen.”

Oliver was desperate on hearing this. He ran out to see whether he could not, by any means, get into the mill, to set the sails agoing: but there were Stephen and Roger, carrying water, which they threw over all the gypsum that was ground,—floating away as much as they could of it, and utterly spoiling the rest, by turning it into a plaster.

“Did you ever see the like?” cried Ailwin. “And there is nothing master is so particular about as keeping that stuff dry. See the woman, too! How I’d like to tug the hair off her head! She looks badly, poor creature, too.”

Stephen’s wife had, indeed, come up to enjoy the sport, when she found that no man was on the premises, and that there was no danger. There she stood, leaning against a post of the mill, her black, untidy hair hanging about her pale, hollow cheeks, and her lean arms crossed upon her bosom.

“There were such ague-struck folk to be seen at every turn,” said Ailwin, “before the foreigners came to live in the carr. I suppose they brought some healing with them; for one does not often see now such a poor creature as that. She might be ashamed of herself,—that woman; she laughs all her poor sides can, at every pailful Roger pours out.—Eh! But she’s not laughing now! Eh! What’s the matter now?”

The matter was that neighbour Gool was in sight, with three or four men. A cheer was heard from them while they were still some way off. Oliver ran out and cheered, waving his hat over his head. Ailwin cheered, waving a towel out of the window. Mildred cheered from the roof, waving her red flag; and George stood in the doorway, shouting and clapping his little hands.

If the object was to catch the trespassers, all this cheering took place a little too soon. Stephen and Roger were off, like their own wild-ducks,—over the garden hedge, and out of sight. Neighbour Gool declared that if they were once fairly among the reeds in the marsh, it would be sheer waste of time to search for them; for they could dodge and live in the water, in a way that honest people that lived on proper hard ground could not follow. Here was the woman; and yonder was the tent. Revenge might be taken that way, better than by ducking in the ponds after the man and boy. Suppose they took the woman to prison, and made a great fire in the carr, of the tent and everything in it!

Oliver did not see that it could make up to them for what they had lost, to burn the tent; and he was pretty sure his father would not wish such a thing to be done. His father would soon be home. As for the woman, he thought she ought to go to prison, if Mr Gool would take her there.

“That I will,” said Gool. “I will go through with the thing now I am in it. I came off the minute I saw your red flag; and I might have been here sooner, if I had not been so full of watching the mill-sails, that I never looked off from them till my wife came to help to watch. Come, you woman,” said he to Nan Redfurn, “make no faces about going to prison, for I am about to give you a ride there.”

“She looks very ill,” thought Oliver,—“not fit to be jolted on a horse.”

“You’ll get no magistrate to send me to prison,” said the woman. “The justices are with the parliament, every one. You will only have to bring me back, and be sorry you caught me, when you see what comes of it.”

“Cannot we take care of her here till father comes home?” said Oliver, seeing that neighbour Gool looked perplexed, and as if he believed what the woman said.

“No, no,” said Mildred, whispering to her brother. “Don’t let that woman stay here.”

“Neighbour Gool will take care of us till father comes home,” said Oliver: “and the woman looks so ill! We can lock her up here: and, you see, Ailwin is ever so much stronger than she is, poor thing!”

Neighbour Gool put on an air of being rather offended that nothing great was to be done, after his trouble in coming to help. In his heart, however, he was perhaps not very sorry; for he knew that the magistrates were not willing to countenance the king’s settlers in the Levels, while the Parliament Committee was sitting at Lincoln. Gool patted Oliver’s head when the boy thanked him for coming; and he joked Mildred about her flag: so he could not be very cross. He left two men to guard the prisoner and the premises, till Mr Linacre should return.

These two men soon left off marching about the garden and yard, and sat down on the mill-steps; for the day grew very hot. There they sat talking in the shade, till their dinners should be ready. Nan Redfurn was so far from feeling the day to be hot, that when her cold ague-fit came on, she begged to be allowed to go down to the kitchen fire. Little George stood staring at her for some time, and then ran away; and Mildred, not liking to be in the same room with a woman who looked as she did, and who was a prisoner, stole out too, though she had been desired to watch the woman till dinner should be ready. Ailwin was so struck with compassion, that she fetched her warmest woollen stockings and her winter cloak of linsey-woolsey,—it was such a piteous thing to hear a woman’s teeth chattering in her head, in that way, at noon in the middle of August. Having wrapped her up, she put her on a stool, close to the great kitchen fire; and drew out the screen that was used only in winter, to keep off the draughts from the door. If the poor soul was not warm in that corner, nothing could make her so. Then Ailwin began to sing to cheer her heart, and to be amazingly busy in cooking dinner for three additional persons. She never left off her singing but when she out went for the vegetables, and other things she wanted for her cooking; and when she came in again she resumed her song,—still for the sake of the poor creature behind the screen.

“Do you feel yourself warmer now, neighbour?” said she at the end of an hour. “If not, you are past my understanding.”

There was no answer; and Ailwin did not wonder, as she said to herself, that it was too great a trouble for one so poorly to be answering questions: so Ailwin went on slicing her vegetables and singing.

“Do you think a drop of cherry-brandy would warm you, neighbour?” she asked, after a while. “I wonder I never thought of that before; only, it is a sort of thing one does not recollect till winter comes. Shall I get you a sup of cherry-brandy?”

Ailwin thought it so odd that such an offer as this should not be replied to, that she looked hastily behind the screen, to see what could be the reason. There was reason enough. Nobody was there. Nan Redfurn had made her way out as soon as she found herself alone, and was gone, with Ailwin’s best winter stockings and linsey-woolsey cloak.

In a minute the whole party