“Did Davy never see a mischievous boy fidgeting at prayers?” asked the Doctor, who was nearer than she thought.  “If so, he has been luckier than I have been.”

There was a laugh, out of deference to the clergyman, but the old woman held to her point.  “Begging your Reverence’s pardon, sir, there be more in this than we knows.  They says up at Oakwood, there’s no peace in the place for the spite of him, and when they thinks he is safe locked into his chamber, there he be a-clogging of the spit, or changing sugar into pepper, or making the stool break down under one.  Oh, he be a strange one, sir, or summat worse.  I have heerd him myself hollaing ‘Ho! ho! ho!’ on the downs enough to make one’s flesh creep.”

“I will tell you what he is, dame,” said the Doctor gravely.  “He is a poor child who had a fit in his cradle, and whom all around have joined in driving to folly, evil, and despair through your foolish superstitions.  He is my guest, and I will have no more said against him at my table.”

The village gossips might be silenced by awe of the parson, but their opinion was unshaken; and Silas Hewlett, a weather-beaten sailor with a wooden leg, was bold enough to answer, “Ay, ay, sir, you parsons and gentlefolk don’t believe naught; but you’ve not seen what I have with my own two bodily eyes—­” and this of course was the prelude to the history of an encounter with a mermaid, which alternated with the Flying Dutchman and a combat with the Moors, as regular entertainment at the Sunday meal.

When Mrs. Woodford went upstairs she was met by the servant Nicolas, declaring that she might get whom she would to wait on that there moon-calf, he would not go neist the spiteful thing, and exhibiting a swollen finger, stung by a dead wasp, which Peregrine had cunningly disposed on the edge of his empty plate.

She soothed the man’s wrath, and healed his wound as best she might, ere returning to her patient, who looked at her with an impish grin on his lips, and yet human deprecation in his eyes.  Feeling unprepared for discussion, she merely asked whether the dinner had been relished, and sat down to her book; but there was a grave, sorrowful expression on her countenance, and, after an interval of lying back uneasily in his chair, he exclaimed, “It is of no use; I could not help it.  It is my nature.”

“It is the nature of many lads to be mischievous,” she answered; “but grace can cure them.”

Therewith she began to read aloud.  She had bought the Pilgrim’s Progress (the first part) from a hawker, and she was glad to have at hand something that could hardly be condemned as frivolous or prelatical.  The spell of the marvellous book fell on Peregrine; he listened intently, and craved ever to hear more, not being yet able to read without pain and dizziness.  He was struck by hearing that the dream of Christian’s adventures had visited that same tinker, whose congregation his own wicked practices had broken up.