But he had not. The fence was there to protect the ruins from the feet of straying cattle. It was not needed to keep off the people of the little place, for they gazed upon it with awe, and whispered that it was haunted by the dead. And, when Master Peasegood asked thereof, the founder said his words stood firm. But this was when weeks had glided by, and Gil Carr's ship was tossing far away upon the sea. Volume 3, Chapter VIII. HOW THE BECKLEY PULLET RULED THE ROOST. Dame Beckley was one of the happiest women under the sun, for she had scarcely a care. Her sole idea of home management was obedience, and she obeyed her lord implicitly. Next to him she yielded no little show of duty to her daughter, who ruled her with a rod of iron, which she changed for one of steel when dealing with her father. "Well, my dear," said the dame, "speaking as a woman of the world, I must say I think it hardly becoming of us to keep Sir Mark here after his behaviour to us before. See how he slighted us. Fancy a man who calls himself a courtier telling a lady of title that her camomile tea that she has made with her own hands--it was the number one, my dear, flavoured with balm--was no better than poison." "Never mind the camomile tea, mother. I tell you I wish Sir Mark to be persuaded to stay." "Ah, well, my dear, if you wish it, of course he shall be pressed. I'll tell him that you insisted--" "Mother!" "La! my dear, what have I done now?" cried Dame Beckley. "You quite startle me when you stamp your feet and look like that." "How can you be so foolish, mother? Go--go, and tell Sir Mark--insist upon his staying here." "Well, my dear, and very proud he ought to be, I'm sure. Why, when I was young, if a gentleman had--" "Mother!" "There, there, my dear, I've done. I'll try and persuade Sir Mark to stay. I'm sure it would do him good, though I don't want him. It always seems to me that that terrible explosion sent a regular jar through what Master Furton, the Queen's chirurgeon, called the absorbens. If he were my son, I should certainly make him take a spoonful of my conserve of elder night and morning, and drink agrimony tea three times a day. In cases where there is the slightest touch of fever there is nothing--bless the girl, why she has gone, when did she go out of the room?" Mistress Anne had gone away directly after her last imperious utterance of the word "mother," and walked straight to her father's room. She had left Dame Beckley busy over her herbal, and she now found her father also on study bent, his book being a kind of magistrates' _vade mecum_ of those days on the subject of witchcraft, and the author his Majesty the King. "What are you reading, father?" she said, making him start as she came suddenly behind him and laid her hand upon his shoulder. "His Majesty's book, my dear." "Why?"