“God knows I have laboured diligently to avoid this sin! No pastor has brought more actions for an equal amount: and I have written to the justices so often that they begin, I fear, to be weary of my informations. But what can I do else for the ease of my conscience? The distraint and sale of Stratten’s goods last year caused me to lie awake a whole night from concern for the recusant; and I believe I could not have gone through with the affair but for the fear of being myself disobedient to the law of the church.” “I saw little Mary Stratten to-day, sitting at the workhouse gate as you went by,” observed Alice. “She is not nearly so puny now,—since they all went into the workhouse,—as she was when you brought her in to be warmed and have a bit of bread that day in the winter. But, papa, Mr. Peterson will not prevent my making your hay, will he? You know you promised that I might make up your haycock in the rectory-field: and I told Joseph Lambert so, this afternoon.” “It will be Mr. Peterson’s haycock, my child: but he will allow you to make sport with the hay-makers, I do not doubt. And this reminds me, brother, of my other reason for allowing Peterson to become my lessee. I may thereby avoid all intercourse (unless on purely spiritual matters) with the person who is about to inhabit the rectory.” “Ah! I heard that Sir William had let the rectory to a gentleman for two or three years; and I hoped he might be a prop to the church in this neighbourhood.” “So far from it, that I must be incessantly vigilant lest he should poison the streams at which our flocks must drink.” “Poison!” exclaimed Alice. “O, papa! is Mr. Mackintosh a bad man?” “Go, my dear child, and occupy yourself in something pleasant till we send for you,” said the vicar. “Papa, uncle Jerom has not done eating yet: and you know if you once send me away, you will forget to send for me again. You always do.” The vicar, however, did not choose that his little daughter should have her mind contaminated by any ideas about infidelity, and uncle Jerom therefore resolutely pushed from him the last remains of the loaf, and Alice withdrew, full of curiosity about poisoning, and the dreadful thing, whatever it was, that was the matter with Mr. Mackintosh. She chose to employ herself in watering the flower-bed below the parlour window,—not for the purpose of overhearing, which was out of the question,—but that her father might, by seeing her, be reminded, in the midst of his affection for mother-church, that he had a daughter. She could not give up her privilege of being called ‘dear child,’ the last thing before she went to bed. She saw that papa and uncle had drawn their chairs close together, and that they looked very much like people talking secrets. And so they were.