But this is leaping too far ahead. As yet she is only Parthenope’s little playfellow and schoolfellow in the room devoted to “lessons” at Lea Hall, the small maiden who climbs the hill on Sundays to the church where the yew tree guards the door, and on week-days is busy or at play in the house that has been the home of her father’s family through many generations, and in the grounds of the manor that surround it. Lea Hall is in that part of the country which Father Benson has described in his novel, “Come Rack, come Rope,” and the Nightingale children were within easy reach of Dethick Hall, where young Anthony Babington had lived. It must have added zest to their history lessons and their girlish romancings to hear of the secret passage, which was supposed to lead right into Wingfield Manor, from the underground cellar close to the old wall that showed still where Dethick had once reared its stately buildings. The fact that the farm bailiff now kept his potatoes there and could not find the opening, would only make it a constant new ground for adventure and imagination. For they would be told of course—these children—how Mary Stuart had once been a prisoner at Dethick, and Anthony had vowed to be her servant in life or death and never cease from the struggle to set her free so long as life was in him. Nor did he; for he died before her, and it was not at Wingfield, but at Fotheringay, as these little students very well knew, no doubt, that her lovely head soon afterwards was laid upon the block. Enviable children to have such a playground of imagination at their doors! But, indeed, all children have that, and a bare room in a slum, or a little patch of desert ground, may for them be danced over by Queen Mab and all her fairies, or guarded by the very angel who led St. Peter out of prison. Still, it is very exciting to have history written beside the doorstep where you live, and if you grow up in a home where lesson books are an important part of the day’s duties, it is pleasant to find them making adventures for you on your father’s own estate. It mattered nothing that the story would all be told by those contending against Anthony’s particular form of religion, who would be ready to paint him with as black an ink as their regard for justice would allow. To a child, that would rather enhance the vividness of it all. And there was the actual kitchen still standing, with its little harmless-looking trapdoor in the roof that leads into the secret chamber, where the persecuted priests used to hide when they came to celebrate a secret Mass. No wonder the two children delighted in Dethick, and wove many a tale about it. For had they not seen with their very own eyes the great open fireplace in that kitchen, where venison used to be roasted, and the very roasting-jack hanging from its central beam where all the roof-beams were black with age and dark with many tragic memories?