‘Come now, ma am,’ said Dixon, with a kind of cheerful authority, ’you know seeing Master Frederick is just the very thing of all others you’re longing for.  And I’m glad Miss Margaret wrote off straight, without shilly-shallying.  I’ve had a great mind to do it myself.  And we’ll keep him snug, depend upon it.  There’s only Martha in the house that would not do a good deal to save him on a pinch; and I’ve been thinking she might go and see her mother just at that very time.  She’s been saying once or twice she should like to go, for her mother has had a stroke since she came here, only she didn’t like to ask.  But I’ll see about her being safe off, as soon as we know when he comes, God bless him!  So take your tea, ma’am, in comfort, and trust to me.’

Mrs. Hale did trust in Dixon more than in Margaret.  Dixon’s words quieted her for the time.  Margaret poured out the tea in silence, trying to think of something agreeable to say; but her thoughts made answer something like Daniel O’Rourke, when the man-in-the-moon asked him to get off his reaping-hook.  ’The more you ax us, the more we won’t stir.’  The more she tried to think of something anything besides the danger to which Frederick would be exposed—­the more closely her imagination clung to the unfortunate idea presented to her.  Her mother prattled with Dixon, and seemed to have utterly forgotten the possibility of Frederick being tried and executed—­utterly forgotten that at her wish, if by Margaret’s deed, he was summoned into this danger.  Her mother was one of those who throw out terrible possibilities, miserable probabilities, unfortunate chances of all kinds, as a rocket throws out sparks; but if the sparks light on some combustible matter, they smoulder first, and burst out into a frightful flame at last.  Margaret was glad when, her filial duties gently and carefully performed, she could go down into the study.  She wondered how her father and Higgins had got on.

In the first place, the decorous, kind-hearted, simple, old-fashioned gentleman, had unconsciously called out, by his own refinement and courteousness of manner, all the latent courtesy in the other.

Mr. Hale treated all his fellow-creatures alike:  it never entered into his head to make any difference because of their rank.  He placed a chair for Nicholas stood up till he, at Mr. Hale’s request, took a seat; and called him, invariably, ‘Mr. Higgins,’ instead of the curt ‘Nicholas’ or ‘Higgins,’ to which the ‘drunken infidel weaver’ had been accustomed.  But Nicholas was neither an habitual drunkard nor a thorough infidel.  He drank to drown care, as he would have himself expressed it:  and he was infidel so far as he had never yet found any form of faith to which he could attach himself, heart and soul.