"I don't think he stole the chickens, Martha, whatever he's done with our lambs," said Mr. Trevenna quietly.

"

'Master dearie," then said Martha, with a touch of deep tenderness-" Master dearie, 'tes but a crosspatch of an old woman, thicky here !-But times I be maazed. You'm got no fear o' soadgers, I know, nor yet of no wolf at the door, nor yet of Providence-not so's ever I seen. But it do look as if you was afeard o' that Hoblyn, though I 'low you stood up to un straight when he ups through the North Door. An' now I've said it sure, I have!'

"No, dear soul, it's not him I fear-nor any man. But I do confess I fear one thing."

Martha looked up in astonishment, and he continued in grave tones, as if confessing to this humble woman: I fear what I shall find-sin in triumph, will it be?-when once I myself set out from that North Door."

Martha plumped down on the settle by the fire.

"To think," she said, " you be afeared of aughtactually afeared! Why, thicky do beat me-you, Parson?"

Mr. Trevenna sat by her and took one hard knotted hand in his own.

"Martha, you are always good to me; be merciful to a much troubled man. He is very lonely in that church, even though it holds all the world for him. And I think a good Methodist like you should understand my trouble-when it is your own."

"Master!" said Martha in a whisper.

"The cries and sobbings of those little ones," he continued, as if thinking aloud, rather than explaining, "beat and beat upon the rocks; and those waves, too, break and break at the rock upon which our church is built till I go forth that Door myself. Those cries still sob and wail that their shepherd does not seek and find them! That is what I fear, Martha-not

Mr. Hoblyn-no, no-nor even Satan! So you must pray with me that I be led by the Spirit when I am gone forth the North Door, far away from my church wherein goodness and loveliness do dwell. You know, Martha, it was in the Church-Mr. Wesley's Church, your Church, St. Neot's Church—that the manger held its infant Lord, that John baptized, that the young Carpenter gathered the children about him, that the temptations in the wilderness were withstood, that our Redeemer lived and died for us all, and rose for our triumph over pain and death."

Then the two kneeled together at the settle.

This conversation seems to have taken place about the seventh or eighth of December and shows how deeply the fate of his lost children was gripping Mr. Trevenna. He had left no stone unturned to get news of their destination. But it now seemed that the overseer himself did not know it. The parents for the most part willingly believed in the assurances Hoblyn gave them, and Mr. Trevenna was not anxious to raise doubt in their minds. For these mill children, he learned, would go from Cardiff up the Severn as far as Stourport and then across by canal and road to Nottingham or Derby or even Manchester, and there all trace of them might be lost. Yet he could not believe in such barbarity, more particularly as Hoblyn, growing nervous at last with Mr. Trevenna's importunity, vowed he knew the destination of every one of the children in question, though he would not divulge it even to a mother-much less to the crack-brained parson of a tumble-down church in another parish! Mr. Trevenna had even ridden on his pony to Exeter for a talk with the Archdeacon upon the whole question. The great man, as much occupied in his mind with social questions as church polity, had for the time reassured him concerning the provisions made everywhere for the health and instruction, religious and secular, of these young apprentices. But, at the same time, Mr. Trevenna was

horrified to learn how rapidly the spinning mills were increasing. So that it seemed impossible that he should ever find his own flock-unless Hoblyn could be induced to give him information.

A

CHAPTER XIII

SAINT CHRISTOPHER

FTER Martha had given Gennifer her bath upon a certain evening, close following that when Mr. Trevenna had confessed his fear, he must wrap the child in a blanket and take her to the blazing hearth. It was becoming a habit for the child to appear at supper-time; and so well was this understood that Aunt Temperance was no more disconcerted at her departure than Martha at her arrival. Since her capture and confinement in the poorhouse, Genny's truant inclinations had never taken her further than St. Neot's or its cottage. And now in the big settle with the child on his knee, Mr. Trevenna gave her a measure of the long unending fairy-tale he would extemporize in rhyme for her, though he was never sure how much of it she understood. Often the subject would have the Nativity as its central light, or he would invent stories of the Divine Infant and his wonderful talks with the house animals or the birds and beasts and fishes, or tell of kind piskies and brownies and of mermaids, and their frisky-tailed families.

Then he carried the child up to her attic, where through a single pane of distorting glass, she could watch the stars twist and shoot their rays with every movement of her head. But now she curled up into instant sleep, and Mr. Trevenna left her.

He went out into the frosty night. Indeed, he went beyond; for so often nowadays when he closed his

eyes, he would see the spectre of Fear guarding the North Door, forbidding the very way he must go if he would serve those pitiful starvelings. He went out into the night and beyond it no matter how or by what road, he must find his lambs. If the world's ways failed, there were others.

Watchman was looking up into his master's eyes, to learn what game he was after at such a time of night; and Mr. Trevenna answered as if he found comfort in the canine fellowship:

Watchman, boy! 'tis no use your asking whither we go to-night-no, nor when we return. Wilt thou come then? Through the Valley of the Shadow, maybe? If you and I go as we are led, the way will not be soft to our feet!

"

But the dog's only answer was to leap at him in the way his kind use to incite the master's haste by mock forbiddings; and he persisted in it more or less till they came to the breach in the churchyard's stone and tamarisk hedge, out by a stile to which the path from the North Door led. Here the dog forgot his romping and sat down to think. The path

way had been neglected ever since the children were gone, and now with astonishing speed the goose-grass, which by this time should have left nothing but its withered burrs, was incontinently sprawling around and vieing with great new-grown nettles in contempt of man's orderliness. One star in the sky blazed out so bright that the carved head on the tympanum of the dog-tooth Norman arch suddenly became almost luminous. The lichen and ivy-trails that had partly hidden the diabolic face, with its snarl and one lopping ear, lost their opacity; and the dog, with eyes fixed upon it, uttered two angry barks and a howl, and then with dropped tail ran away. But the master stood looking into that face of grinning derision: he could not deny that the face was Daniel Hoblyn's. He laughed aloud