"A new friend, forsooth?" said Christie's father with a smile. "And who is she, sweet heart? Is it Mistress Final's niece, that came to visit her this last week?" "Oh no, Father! 'Tis somebody much--ever so much grander! Only think, the master's daughter, Mistress Pandora Roberts, came with her aunt, Mistress Holland; and Mistress Holland went on to Cranbrook, and took Aunt Tabitha with her--she was here when she came--and Mistress Pandora tarried with me, and talked, till her aunt came back to fetch her. Oh, she is a sweet maid, and I do love her!" Roger Hall looked rather grave. He had kept himself, and even more, his Christie, from the society of outsiders, for safety's sake. For either of them to be known as a Gospeller, the name then given to the true, firm-hearted Protestants, would be a dangerous thing for their liberties, if not their lives. Pandora Roberts was the daughter of a man who, once a Protestant, had conformed to the Romanised form of religion restored by Queen Mary, and her uncle was one of the magistrates on the Cranbrook bench. Roger was sorry to hear that one so nearly allied to these dangerous people had found his little violet under the leaves where he had hoped that she was safely hidden. A sharp pang shot through his heart as the dread possibility rose before him of his delicate little girl being carried away to share the comfortless prison of his sister. Such treatment would most likely kill her very soon. For himself he would have cared far less: but Christie! He was puzzled how to answer Christie's praises of Pandora. He did not wish to throw cold water on the child's delight, nor to damage her newly found friend in her eyes. But neither did he wish to drag her into the thorny path wherein he had to walk himself--to hedge her round with perpetual cautions and fears and terrors, lest she should let slip some word that might be used to their hurt. An old verse says-- "Ye gentlemen of England That sit at home at ease, Ye little know the miseries And dangers of the seas." And it might be said with even greater truth--Ye men and women, ye boys and girls of free, peaceful, Protestant England, ye little know the dangers of life in lands where Popish priests rule, nor the miseries that you will have to endure if they ever gain the ascendancy here again! Roger Hall had never heard Dr Abernethy's wise advice--"When you don't know what to do, do nothing." But in this emergency he acted on that principle. "I trust, my dear heart," he said quietly, "that it may please the Lord to make thee and this young gentlewoman a blessing to each other." "Oh, it will, I know, Father!" said Christie, quite unsuspicious of the course of her father's thoughts. "Only think, Father! she told me first thing, pretty nigh, that she loved the Lord Jesus, and wanted to be like Him. So you see we couldn't do each other any hurt, could we?" Roger smiled rather sadly.