“’Tis well,” said he; “and now, hark thee, should one syllable of this night’s business bubble through thy lips, thou hadst better have stayed in the paws of the hobgoblin.  Away!”

Gregory needed no second invitation, but scampered home with great despatch, leaving his master to grope out the way as he thought proper.

There was more bustle and preparation for dinner than usual on the morrow.  Oliver Tempest had sent messengers to Bashall and Waddow; but the guests had not made their appearance.  About noon the hall-table was furnished with a few whittles and well-scoured trenchers.  Bright pewter cups and ale-flagons were set in rows on a side-table, and on the kitchen hearth lay a savoury chine of pork and pease-pudding.  In the great boiling pot, hung on a crook over the fire, bubbled a score of hard dumplings, and in the broth reposed a huge piece of beef—­these dainties being usually served in the following order—­broth, dumpling, beef, according to the old distich—­

    “No broth, no ba’;
    No ba’, no meat at a’.”

Dame Joan of Waddington was the presiding genius of the feast, the conduit-pipe through which flowed the full stream of daily bounty, dispensing every blessing, even the most minute.  In that golden age of domestic discipline it was not beneath the dignity of a careful housewife to attend and take the lead in all culinary arrangements.

The master strode to and fro in the hall, and Elizabeth was humming at her wheel.  He looked anxious and ill at ease, often casting a furtive glance towards the entrance, and occasionally a side-look at his daughter.  She sometimes watched her father’s eye, as though she had caught his restless apprehensions, and would have inquired the cause of his uneasiness.  Suddenly a loud bay from a favourite hound that was dozing on the hearth announced the approach of a stranger.  Oliver advanced with a quick step into the courtyard, and soon re-entered leading in a middle-sized, middle-aged personage, slightly formed, whose pale and saintly features looked haggard and apprehensive, while his eye wavered to and fro, less perhaps with curiosity than suspicion.

He was wrapped in a grey cloak; and a leathern jerkin, barely meeting in front, displayed a considerable breadth of under garment in the space between hose and doublet.  These were fastened together with tags or points, superseding the use of wooden skewers, with which latter mode of suspension not a few of our country yeomen were in those days supplied.  His legs were protected by boots of fine brown Spanish leather, lined with deer-skin, tanned with the fur on, and buttoned from the ankle to the knee.  He had gloves of the same material, reaching to the elbow when drawn up, but now turned down with the fur outwards.  The hands and feet were remarkably small, but well shapen.  A low grey cap of coarse woollen completed the costume of this singular visitor.  There was, at times, in the expression of his eye, an indescribable mixture of imbecility and enthusiasm, as though the spirit of some Eastern fakir had reanimated a living body.  A gleam of almost supernatural intelligence was mingled with an expression of fatuity, that in less enlightened ages would have invested him with the dangerous reputation of priest or prophet in the eyes of the multitude.