“Not my father,” he replied.  “He has a logical mind.  Martha is up here with her guardian, and I am keeping out of her way, and my brother is full in the thick of the fray.  A bonfire is a bonfire to most folks, were it to roast their grandsire!”

“Oh, fie, Mr. Oakshott, how you do talk!” laughed Mrs. Archfield.

“Nay, but you rejoice in the escape of the good Bishops,” put in Lucy.

“For what?” asked Peregrine.  “For refusing to say live and let live?”

“Not against letting live, but against saying so unconstitutionally, my young friend,” said Dr. Woodford, “or tyrannising over our consciences.”

Generally Peregrine was more respectful to Dr. Woodford than to any one else; but there seemed to be a reckless bitterness about him on that night, and he said, “I marvel with what face those same Eight Reverend Seigniors will preach against the French King.”

“Sir,” thrust in Sedley Archfield, “I am not to hear opprobrious epithets applied to the Bishops.”

“What was the opprobrium?” lazily demanded Peregrine, and in spite of his unpopularity, the laugh was with him.  Sedley grew more angry.

“You likened them to the French King—­”

“The most splendid monarch in Europe,” said Peregrine coolly.

“A Frenchman!” quoth one of the young squires with withering contempt.

“He has that ill fortune, sir,” said Peregrine.  “Mayhap he would be sensible of the disadvantage, if he evened himself with some of my reasonable countrymen.”

“Do you mean that for an insult, sir?” exclaimed Sedley Archfield, striding forward.

“As you please,” said Peregrine.  “To me it had the sound of compliment.”

“Oh la! they’ll fight,” cried Mrs. Archfield.  “Don’t let them!  Where’s the Doctor?  Where’s Sir Philip?”

“Hush, my dear,” said Lady Archfield; “these gentlemen would not fall out close to us.”

Dr. Woodford was out of sight, having been drawn into controversy with a fellow-clergyman on the limits of toleration.  Anne looked anxiously for him, but with provoking coolness Peregrine presently said, “There’s no crowd near, and if you will step out, the fires on the farther hills are to be seen well from the knoll hard by.”

He spoke chiefly to Anne, but even if she had not a kind of shrinking from trusting herself with him in this strange wild scene, she would have been prevented by Mrs. Archfield’s eager cry—­

“Oh, I’ll come, let me come!  I’m so weary of sitting here.  Thank you, Master Oakshott.”

Lady Archfield’s remonstrance was lost as Peregrine helped the little lady out, and there was nothing for it but to follow her, as close as might be, as she hung on her cavalier’s arm chattering, and now and then giving little screams of delight or alarm.  Lady Archfield and her daughter each was instantly squired, but Mistress Woodford, a nobody, was left to keep as near them as she could, and gaze at the sparks of light of the beacons in the distance, thinking how changed the morrow would be to her.