"Master Ingle, I have told you more than once that I could listen to no such talk from you." "Your word is law," said Ingle, bowing low. Then with a swift turn of the tide of talk, "I must tell you how narrow an escape these ducks had from becoming food for some dirty red man instead of lying in state on your table. I shot them on the river a day or two since. Father White asked me to go with him as interpreter on a mission among the Patuxents. We took a boat and two chests, one containing clothing along with bread and butter and cheese and corn, and another containing bottles of wine for the eucharist and holy water for baptism. But in the night the savages broke into the tent where that dolt of a servant slept, and stole the sacramental wine and our chest of clothing and all the food save one pat of butter and a cheese-cake. "Father White was so pleased that the sacred vessels were untouched that he fell on his knees, giving thanks as though the whole affair were a great mercy; and for me, to tell the truth, when I found the ducks I did shoot for you were still there, I heeded no other loss." Elinor came nearer to a smile than the last month had witnessed. There was consolation in knowing that there was still some one to whom she was first, whose only thought was the gratification of her tastes and fancies. "They are in the nick of time," she said, "to garnish our supper to-night, when I do expect my cousin, Margaret Brent, who comes to spend some time under my roof. Perhaps you will join us." "Thanks, fair hostess; but Mistress Margaret Brent and I agree not as well as I and her brother and sister. Besides, I did promise the Governor to be back this night at St. Gabriel's." "Master Ingle?" "Yes, Cecil." "Will you pass by the road where Father Mohl was murdered?" Ingle started. He loved not ghostly thoughts nor sad memories. "Not I," he said hastily; "but by the main road." "I am sorry." "Why?" "I wanted so much to have you look in the branches of the tree and see if by chance you saw any scrap of cloth that did look like the cloaking of a witch." "Hush, Cecil!" cried Elinor, clasping her hands over the boy's mouth. "Drop no hint that might spread another calumny. We who are suffering from that dread scourge should see to it that we lay not the lash to the back of another. Whoever the guilty one is, we must leave him to God, and I believe in my heart his suffering is greater than mine, or than any that ever Christopher Neville knew." "Think you all souls are as sensitive as thine?" asked Ingle, gazing with reverence into the face so near and yet so infinitely far away. "I know not; but I can conceive no nature so base that it would not writhe to see its just censure borne by another; and to be so sunk in sin as to feel nothing,--why, that would be most pitiable of all."