"Well, good-day, Aunt Isel! I'll send you down the holy-thistle. Good-day, Flemild. Aren't you coming with me, Stephen?" "No; I want to wait for Uncle Manning." "Stephen, I'm obliged to you for ever and ever! If she'd stayed another minute, I should have flown at her!" "You looked as if you'd come to the end of your patience," said Stephen, smiling, but gravely; "and truly, I don't wonder. But what's this about holy-thistle? Are you sick, Aunt Isel?" Isel looked searchingly into her nephew's face. "You look true," she said; "I think you might be trusted, Stephen." "Oh, _if_ you're grieving over _them_, don't be afraid to tell me so. I did my best to save Gerard, but he would not be warned. I'd have caught up the child and brought him to you, if I'd had a chance; but I was hemmed in the crowd, a burly priest right afore me, and I couldn't have laid hand on him. Poor souls! I'm sorry for them." "God bless thee for those words, Stephen! I'm sore for them to the very core of my heart. If they'd been my own father's children or mine, I couldn't feel sadder than I do. And to have to listen to those hard, cold, brutal words from that woman--." "I know. She is a brute. I guessed somewhat how things were going with you, for I saw her turn in here from the end of Saint Edward's; and I thought you mightn't be so sorry to have her sent off. Her tongue's not so musical as might be." Manning and Haimet came in together. The former went up to Isel, while Haimet began a conversation with his cousin, and after a moment the two young men left the house together. Then Manning spoke. "Wife and children," said he, "from this day forward, no word is to be uttered in my house concerning these German people. They are heretics, so pronounced by holy Church; and after that, no compassion may be shown to them. Heretics are monsters, demons in human form, who seek the ruin of souls. Remember my words." Isel looked earnestly in her husband's face. "No," said Manning, not unkindly, but firmly; "no excuses for them, Isel. I can quite understand that you feel sorry for those whom you have regarded as friends for seven years: but such sorrow is now sin. You must crush and conquer it. It were rebellion against God, who has judged these miscreants by the lips of His Church." Isel broke down in a very passion of tears. "I can't help it, Manning; I can't help it!" she said, when she could speak. "It may be sin, but I must do it and do penance for it--it's not a bit of use telling me I must not. I'll try not to talk if you bid me be silent, but you must give me a day or two to get quieted,--till every living creature round has done spitting venom at them. I don't promise to hold my tongue to that ninny of an Anania--she aggravates me while it isn't in human nature to keep your tongue off her; it's all I can do to hold my hands." "She is very provoking, Father," said Flemild in an unsteady voice; "she wears Mother fairly out."