Neal Ward was awakened next morning by the noise which Peg Macllrea made sweeping and tidying the room where he slept. He lay for a few minutes watching the girl. Her red hair was coiled up now in a neat roll at the back of her head. Her freckled face was clean, and had apparently escaped bruising in her conflict with the dragoon. She wore a short grey skirt of woollen homespun. The sleeves of her bodice were rolled up, and displayed a pair of muscular red arms. The girl was more than commonly tall, and anyone listening to her heavy footfall, and noting her thick figure and broad shoulders, would have understood that she was well able to carry a young man, even of Neal’s height, up a flight of stairs. The dragoon might easily have come to the worst in single combat with such a maiden if he had not obtained an advantage over her at the start by twisting her hair round his hand. It was not very long before she noticed that Neal was awake. She came over to him smiling. “You’ve had a brave sleep,” she said. “It’s nigh on eleven o’clock. The master and Mr. Ward are out this twa hours. They bid me not stir you. I was just readying up the room a bit, and I went about it as mim as a mouse.” “I’m thinking,” said Neal, “that I’ll be getting up now.” “‘Deed, then, and you’ll no. The last word the master said was just that you were to lie in the day. I’m to give you tea and toasted bread, and an egg if you fancy it.” “But,” said Neal, “I can’t lie here in bed all day.” “Whisht, now, whisht. Be good and I’ll get you them twa graven images the master’s so set on and let you glower at them. Maybe you never seen the like.” She spoke precisely as if she had a sick child to humour; as if she were the nurse in charge, determined at any sacrifice to keep the peevish little one from crying. She crossed the room to a book-case and took down two bronze busts. With the utmost care she carried them over and laid them on the bed in front of Neal. “The master’s one of them that goes neither to church nor mass nor meeting,” she said. “If ever he says his prayers at all, at all, it’s to them twa graven images he says them, and the dear knows they’re no so eye-sweet.”