‘You hear and see this, Mrs. Golding?’ says Andrew, turning to her, his mild countenance grown dark with anger.  ’There may be murder done yet, let me ride after and see what I can do to hinder it;’ and setting spurs to his horse he galloped off after the rabble.  We saw him pressing in among them, riding close up to the chief horseman, talking earnestly to him; then we saw no more of them, they going round the turn of the road; and Mrs. Golding, half frowning, half smiling, says,—­

’It’s ever so with Andrew! he cannot see mischief a-foot but he is all afire to stop it.  I like it in the lad, but I wish yon poor fanatic had been content to stay at home and mind his own business, instead of crossing us so unluckily here.’  She looked anxiously.

Presently Andrew comes back to us, riding pretty quickly, and Mrs. Golding called to him,—­

‘Now, my lad, hast not gone on a fool’s errand this time also?’ but he said smiling,—­

’That is as you take it, good mother.  Yon Squire has some humanity in him, and some wit; for when I began vehemently to urge how sinful were the murdering of yon poor man, he smiled and let me know his proffer of the duck-pond was but to get the man out of the hands of his ill-wishers, for he meant to draw the Quaker within his gates and then have them shut as if by mistake on the rabble, who were already growing aweary with the length of the way, and so were dropping off by twos and threes.’

‘So thou hast had thy labour for thy pains?’ says Mrs. Golding, smiling as one well pleased.

‘Not altogether,’ said Andrew, ’for the Squire wills us to turn into the byway here, and keep from the high road awhile, lest we meet the baser rascals coming back, in all their fury and disappointment.’

‘Good counsel,’ said Mrs. Golding; ‘we will take it.’  And so we kept to that byway for a mile or so; and it was rough uneasy riding, though a pretty green lane enough.

Althea said to me half aside, ’We had had none of these discomforts, if we had ridden as we were wont with our father, in a good coach like gentlewomen, and not a-horseback in the country fashion;’ the first discontented word she had said, and Mrs. Golding hearing it,—­

‘Child,’ said she, ’I cannot away with these coaches, they are proud lazy inventions, and nothing like so wholesome as this our old country fashion of travelling;’ at which Althea blushed and said nothing more, and Mrs. Golding began pleasantly to chide Andrew for his hazarding of our safety as he had done, which had put Althea into these discontents; and he hung his head, smiling, and had not a word to say for himself.  I should scarce have remembered this accident, or Andrew’s behaviour on it, had it not been for things that befell after.