When, a moment later, Roger and Master Simon half helped, half carried the stranger through the door, Margeret’s first feeling was a sinking of the heart and the despairing thought: “Oh, if only my mother were here!” But the next minute her courage rose again at the thought that here was a task to which, after all, she was quite equal and that at last had come a thrilling adventure in which she could have her own share. She went about the kitchen, mending the fire, setting the kettle to boil, bringing blankets to be heated and herbs to be brewed as steadily and gravely as though she were Mistress Radpath herself. But all the time her heart was beating loud with excitement rather than terror at the risk they were running. She caught Roger’s eye once or twice and observed that under his grave demeanour he was as stirred at heart as she was. Here at last was the solution to his mystery, this was the friend that he had visited so often in the forest, it was this very escape through Hopewell that he had planned and worried over so many months. It took much effort and all of Master Simon’s skill to revive the exhausted guest, to quiet his shivering, to warm his trembling hands and bring a little colour back into his deathlike face. That he was old, Margeret had known from the talk in the field, but she had not been prepared to see any one so feeble, so small and shrunken, so bowed down with age and long hardship. He lay back unmoving in Master Simon’s big chair, his thin, almost transparent hands resting limp and seemingly lifeless against the cushion. At length, however, he stirred, opened his black eyes to look about him in wonder for a moment and, finally, he smiled and spoke. “So it is that I am among friends,” he said in his quaint French-flavoured English. “I, who have been hunted like a wild animal up and down your fields these three hours past. They are no respecters of old age and white hairs, these Puritan brothers of yours, Monsieur Simon.” “They know not any better,” answered Master Simon briefly, “and since they have failed to find you we can forgive them.” “Yes, they failed, thanks to this brave friend of mine here,” smiled the little priest, laying his hand upon Roger Bardwell’s. “And I think it is thanks also to the high hedges of your garden that Puritan zeal and Puritan justice went by on the other side to-night.” His spirits seemed to revive quickly as the pleasant glow of the fire began to warm his chilled bones. Before an hour had passed he was sitting upright among the cushions and blankets telling, to three most eager listeners, tales of his life in the forest. Roger Bardwell was seated on the settle, warming his cold hands at last and drying his rain-soaked clothes. He seemed a different boy now, with all the old trouble and misgiving put aside for the moment, since now his perilous affairs were in Master Simon’s safe keeping.