“Am I late?” the head said in a hoarse whisper from its place low down on the door-jamb.  It was Monsey Laman, red and puffing after a sharp run.

“It’s the laal Frenchman.  Come thy ways in,” said Matthew.  Rotha, who was coming and going from the kitchen to the larder, found a chair for the schoolmaster, and he slid into it with the air of one who was persuading himself that his late advent was unobserved.

“I met that Garth—­that—­Joe Garth on the road, and he kept me,” whispered Monsey apologetically to Matthew across the table.  The presence of Death somewhere in the vicinity had banished the schoolmaster’s spirit of fun.

While this was going on at one end of the table, Rotha had made her way to the other end, with the ostensible purpose of cutting up the cheese, but with the actual purpose of listening to a conversation in which his reverence Nicholas Stevens was beginning to bear an unusually animated part.  Some one had made allusion to the sudden and, as was alleged, the unseemly departure of Ralph Ray on the eve of his father’s funeral.  Some one else had deplored the necessity for that departure, and had spoken of it as a cruel outrage on the liberties of a good man.  From this generous if somewhat disloyal sentiment his reverence was expressing dissent.  He thought it nothing but just that the law should take its course.

This might involve the mortification of our private feelings; it would certainly be a grief to him, loving, as he did, the souls committed to his care; but individual affections must be sacrificed to the general weal.  The young man, Ralph Ray, had outraged the laws of his country in fighting and conspiring against his anointed King.  It was hard, but it was right, that he should be punished for his treason.

His reverence was speaking in cold metallic tones, that fell like the clank of chains on Rotha’s ears.

“Moreover, we should all do our best for the King,” said the clergyman, “to bring such delinquents to justice.”

“Shaf!” cried Matthew Branthwaite from the other end of the table.  The little knots of talkers had suddenly become silent.

“Shaf!” repeated Matthew; “what did ye do yersel for the King in Oliver’s days?  Wilt thoo mak me tell thee?  Didst thoo not tak what thoo called the oath of abjuration agen the King five years agone?  Didst thoo not?  Ey?  And didst thoo not come round and ask ivery man on us to do the same?”

The clergyman looked confounded.  He dropped his knife and, unable to make a rejoinder, turned to those about him and said, in a tone of amazement, “Did you ever hear the like?”

“Nay,” cried Matthew, following up his advantage, “ye may hear it agen, an ye will.”

Poor Mrs. Branthwaite seemed sorely distressed.  Standing by her husband’s chair, she appeared to be struggling between impulse and fear in an attempt to put her hand on the mouth of her loquacious husband, in order to avert the uncertain catastrophe which she was sure must ensue from this unexpected and uncompromising defiance of the representative in Wythburn of the powers that be.