It is a strange thing about grown-ups who set up for knowing everything that they never carry things that are really useful in their pockets; only watches and money, which people try to steal. Now, every boy has twine and knives, and fish-hooks and marbles, and a catapult, and yet nobody ever thinks of stopping him with a levelled pistol on the King's highway, saying, "Your pockets or your life!" They would need to have regular Pickford vans to carry off the plunder, anyway, if they cleaned out very many boys. Why, I should think it a shame if I had less than sixty things in my pockets, all different, and all of the kind that you never knew when you were going to need them. And me going on for eighteen, too, and not a real schoolboy any longer, but a man! Then, after a while, I began to explain to Mr. Ablethorpe all about everything. He just sat open-mouthed as I told him about father and about the mare coming into our yard through a locked door. I was watching him. He turned a bit paler, but his face was not the face of a guilty man. "Of course, I see now, Joe," he said, "it looked bad. And I don't wonder the mob acted as they did, seeing me leave the barn so hurriedly." Now, though I did not say so, I thought that pretty good, just about as good as a dozen glass marbles for a halfpenny. "Leave the barn hurriedly!" says he. My respectable Aunt Sally! Why, he simply scooted like the wind! What is it? He "stood not on the order of his going, but--went?" I bet he did! There wasn't anybody in Mr. Mustard's school--no, nor yet in Breckonside, who could have caught the Hayfork Parson but me. He had legs like a whacking pair of compasses, and went along like the wild ass that sniffeth up the wind. "Yes," he repeated, tying a white handkerchief about the size of a tablecloth round his brow--I kept mum about what had given him the headache; pretended that I had brought out the hook to fish with--"yes, Joe, I did leave the barn in a hurry. But it was for the sake of those poor, foolish women, for whose souls none cares but myself. I know well that in going there at all I am taking my life in my hands. But the eldest, Miss Aphra Orrin, shows a little more stability than the others. And it was borne in upon me as a duty that I should try and make them put away their mad vanities, no better than stocks and stones, by substituting a real worship in a real chapel. I found out by chance that the barn of Deep Moat Grange had been an oratory in the days of the ancient Cistercian Abbey, which had been built on that site about 1460. It was, therefore, in my opinion, duly and properly consecrated. True, I have not obtained the authorization of my bishop, and for that, Joseph, you may blame me." I told him that it was all right as far as I was concerned. I did not think of doing so. His dread secret, if that were all, was quite safe with me.