“Let them but once start forth without us and all will be well,” answered Cherry quickly.  “The only trouble will be that Aunt Susan loves to drag me whither she knows I love not to go, and father thinks that these wearisome discourses are for the saving of souls.  He will wish to take the twain of us.  It must be ours to escape him and abide at home.”

“And how can we compass that?”

“For thee it will be easy,” answered Cherry.  “Thou must promise Walter Cole to assist him with some task of printing or binding that same evening, and tell my father that thou art not seasoned to long discourses, and hast no desire to fill the room of another who would fain hear the words of life from the notable man.  There will be more crowding to hear him than the room will hold, so that it will be no idle plea on thy part.  Once thou art gone I can yawn and feign some sort of ache or colic that will make me plead to go to bed rather than attend the preaching.  Aunt Susan will scold and protest it is but mine idleness and sinfulness in striving to avoid the godly discourse; but father will not compel me to go.  And when all have started thou canst return, and we will together to the wise woman; and be she never so long with her divinations, we shall have returned long ere they have done, and none will know of the visit.”

Cuthbert agreed willingly to this plan.  A bit of mischief and frolic was as palatable to young folks in the seventeenth century as it is in the nineteenth, and as a frolic those two regarded the whole business.  They were both full of curiosity about the wise woman and her divinations, and it seemed to Cherry that to fail in taking advantage of her skill when they had the chance of doing so would be simple folly and absurdity.  If she could read the secrets of the future, surely she must be able to tell them somewhat of the lost treasure.

Cherry’s plan was carried out to the letter without the least real difficulty, and without raising any suspicion.  Martin Holt was not particularly anxious that the exact locality of the underground meeting place should be known to his nephew, who had not professed himself by any means on the Puritan side as yet, though listening with dutiful and heedful attention whenever his uncle spoke to him on the matter of his tenets.  As for Cherry, her dislike to sermons had long been openly declared, and it was scarcely expected that she would patiently endure another of the discourses that had caused her such distaste before.

And so it came about that upon a chill, frosty January night, Cuthbert and Cherry stood before a small, narrow house in Budge Row—­a house that seemed to be jammed in between its two neighbours, and almost crushed by their overhanging gables and heavy beams; and Cherry, with a trembling hand, gave a peculiar knock, thrice repeated, upon the stout panels of the narrow door, that at the third summons opened slowly and noiselessly, as if without any human agency.