"I mind you were but a stripling in those days, and yet in gross darkness. Yea, I have a letter for thee from my comrade, who is come to high preferment." "Jeph!" "Yea, things have prospered with him. He was a serjeant even before we sailed for Ireland, and there he did such good service in hunting out Popish priests and rebels in their lurking places in the bogs and mountains, that the Lord General hath granted him the land that he took with his sword and his bow, even a meadow land fat and fertile, Ballyshea by name, full of the bulls of Bashan, goodly to look at. And to make all sure, he hath taken to wife the daughter of the former owner of the land a damsel fair to look upon." "Jeph! But sure--the Irish are Papists." "Not the whole of them. There are those that hold to Prelacy and call themselves King's men, following the bloody and blinded Duke of Ormond. Of them was this maid's father, whom we slew at the taking of Clonmel, where I got this wound and left my good right leg. So is the race not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happeneth to all. When I could hobble about once more on crutches, I found that the call had come to divide and possess the gate of the enemy, and that the meads of Ballyshea had fallen to Serjeant Kenton. Moreover, in the castle hard by, dwelt the widow and her daughter, who cried to General Lambert for their land, and what doth he say to Jephthah, but 'Make it sure, Kenton. Take the maid to wife, and so none will disturb you in the fair heritage.' Yea, and mine old comrade would have me sojourn with him till I was quite restored, so far as a man with one limb short may be. I tell you 'tis a castle, man." "Our Jeph lord of a castle?" "Aye, even so. Twice as big as Elmwood Hall, if half were not in ruins, and the other half the rats run over like peas out of a bag. While as to the servants, there are dozens of them, mostly barefoot and in rags, who will run at the least beck from the old mistress or the young mistress, though they scowl at the master. But he is taking order with them, and teaching them who is to be obeyed." "Then our Jephthah is a great man?" "You may say that--a bigger man than the squire at Elmwood, or at Leigh I can tell you. Only I would give all that bare mountain and bog, full of wild, Popish, red-haired kernes for twenty yards in a tidy street at Bristol, with decent godly folk around me. Murdering or being murdered, I have marvelled more than once whether the men of Israel were as sick of it in Canaan as I was at Drogheda, but the cry ever was, 'Be not slack in the work.' But I will bring you Jephthah's letter. He could not write when he went off, but he could not be a serjeant without, so we taught him--I and Corporal Faith-Wins." Jephthah's handwriting was of a bold description doing honour to his tutors, but the letter was very brief, though to the purpose-- "Dear Brothers and Sisters,