The coach was sent over to fetch Mistress Anne to Fareham, and the invalid was left, comfortably installed in her easy-chair by the parlour fire, with a little table by her side, holding a hand-bell, a divided orange, a glass of toast and water, and the Bible and Prayer-book, wherein lay her chief studies, together with a little needlework, which still amused her feeble hands.  The Doctor, divided between his parish, his study, and his garden, had promised to look in from time to time.

Presently, however, the door was gently tapped, and on her call “Come in,” Hans, all one grin, admitted Peregrine Oakshott, bowing low in his foreign, courteous manner, and entreating her to excuse his intrusion, “For truly, madam, in your goodness is my only hope.”

Then he knelt on one knee and kissed the hand she held out to him, while desiring him to speak freely to her.

“Nay, madam, I fear I shall startle you, when I lay before you the only chance that can aid me to overcome the demon that is in me.”

“My poor—­”

“Call me your boy, as when I was here seven years ago.  Let me sit at your feet as then and listen to me.”

“Indeed I will, my dear boy,” and she laid her hand on his dark head.  “Tell me all that is in your heart.”

“Ah, dear lady, that is not soon done!  You and Mistress Anne, as you well know, first awoke me from my firm belief that I was none other than an elf, and yet there have since been times when I have doubted whether it were not indeed the truth.”

“Nay, Peregrine, at years of discretion you should have outgrown old wives’ tales.”

“Better be an elf at once—­a soulless creature of the elements—­than the sport of an evil spirit doomed to perdition,” he bitterly exclaimed.

“Hush, hush!  You know not what you are saying!”

“I know it too well, madam!  There are times when I long and wish after goodness—­nay, when Heaven seems open to me—­and I resolve and strive after a perfect life; but again comes the wild, passionate dragging, as it were, into all that at other moments I most loathe and abhor, and I become no more my own master.  Ah!”

There was misery in his voice, and he clutched the long hair on each side of his face with his hands.

“St. Paul felt the same,” said Mrs. Woodford gently.

“‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ Ay, ay! how many times have I not groaned that forth!  And so, if that Father at Turin were right, I am but as Paul was when he was Saul.  Madam, is it not possible that I was never truly baptized?” he cried eagerly.

“Impossible, Peregrine.  Was not Mr. Horncastle chaplain when you were born?  Yes; and I have heard my brother say that both he and your father held the same views as the Church upon baptism.”

“So I thought; but Father Geronimo says that at the best it was but heretical baptism, and belike hastily and ineffectually performed.”