So he first went quietly up to the church, which he found full of benches and pews, with the Altar table in the middle of the nave, and the squire's comfortable cushioned seat at the east end. He knelt on the step for a long time, then made a brief visit to his own house, where the garden was in beautiful order, but only a room or two were furnished with goods he had bought from the Woodleys, and these were in charge of a servant he had hired at Bristol. Thence the old man went out into the village, and his first halt was at the forge, where Blane, who had grown a great deal stouter and more grizzled, started at sight of his square cap. "Eh! but 'tis the old minister! You have come in quietly, sir! I am afraid your reverence has but a sorry welcome." "I do not wonder you are grieved to part with Master Woodley." "Well, sir, he be a good man and a powerful preacher, though no doubt your reverence has the best right, and for one, I'm right glad to see an old face again. We would have rung the bells if we had known you were coming." "That would have been hard on Master Woodley. I am only glad they are not melted. But how is it with all my old friends, Harry? Poor Sir George writ me that old clerk North died of grief of the rifling of the church; and that John Kenton had been killed by some stragglers. What became of his children?" "That eldest lad went off to the Parliament army, and came swaggering here in his buff coat and boots like my Lord Protector himself, they say he has got a castle and lands in Ireland. Men must be scarce, say I, if they have had to make a gentleman of Jeph Kenton." "And the rest?" "Well, sir, I'm afraid that poor lad, Stead, is in poor plight. You mind, he was always a still, steady, hard-working lad, and when his father was killed, and his house burnt, and his brother ran away, the way he and his sister turned to was just wonderful. They went to live in an old hut in the gulley down there, and they have made the place so tidy as it does your heart good to look at it. They bred up the young ones, and the younger girl is well married to one of the Squire's folks, and everyone respected them. But, as ill-luck would have it, some robbers from Bristol seem to have got scent of their savings. Some said that the Communion Cup was hid somewhere there." Mr. Holworth made an anxious sound of interrogation. "Well, I did see the corporal, when the Parliament soldiers were at Bristol, flog Stead shamefully to know where it was, and never get a word out of him, whether or no; and as he was a boy who would never tell a lie, it stands to reason he knew where they were." "But how did anyone guess at his knowing?" asked Mr. Holworth.