"Let it be?" said the other, softly. "Ay, for a season. For a season. Yet remember that it is written, 'A child shall discover the matter.'" "Tush!" Simon answered angrily. "This is folly. Isn't it written also, resist the devil, and he will fly from you!" "Ay, the devil--and his angels," Luke repeated gently. Simon shrugged his shoulders. Nevertheless he too, when he next met the lad wandering aimlessly about, looked at him with new eyes. Though he was subject to no active delusions himself, he had a strong and superstitious respect for his brother's fantasies. He began to watch the boy about, and surprising him one day in a solitary place in the act of forming patterns on the turf with stones, noted with a feeling of dread that these took the shape of a circle and a triangle, with other cabalistic figures as odd as they were unfamiliar. He would not at another time have given such a trifle a second thought. But we see things through the glasses of our own prepossessions. The morose and rugged fanatic, who feared no odds, and whom no persecution could bend, looked askance at the child playing unconsciously before him, looked dubiously at the grey moor strewn with monoliths, and finally with a shiver turned and walked homewards. CHAPTER III. LANGDALE'S HORSE. It was well he did so, for the fiery cross had chosen that moment to arrive; Simon found his household waiting for him at the foldgate, and with them a red-faced man from Settle, who had ridden across the fells with the news that Langdale's people were harrying the place. Before the messenger had had time to come to details, the Puritan was himself again. The light of battle gleamed in his sober eyes, his face grew hard as his native rock. Knowing that he was looked for with anxiety, and that at the rendezvous few would be more welcome, he lost not a moment, but quickly, yet without hurry, fetched his pike and coat, girt on his pistols, and filled his bandoliers. Luke, who had had some minutes the start of him, and whose eyes burned with a sombre enthusiasm, showed himself equally forward. When the two stood ready at the gate, then, and then only, they discovered that the third brother had no intention of accompanying them. He stood back on the inner side of the wall with a frown on his pale face, his attitude a curious mixture of shrinking and resolution. "Come, man, be quick!" Simon cried sharply. "What are you waiting for?" "I'm not coming, Simon," was the reply. "Not coming?" "Some one must stay and take care of the place," the butler answered, wiping his forehead. "I'll stay. Your wife will need some one." "Fool! what can one man do here?" the Puritan retorted fiercely. "Come, I say. This is no time for loitering when the work calls us." Gridley shook his head and moistened his lips with his tongue. "I'm not a fighting man," he muttered feebly.