'Now, my lad, hast not gone on a fool's errand this time also?' but he
said smiling,--

'That is as you take it, good mother. Yon Squire has some humanity in
him, and some wit; for when I began vehemently to urge how sinful were
the murdering of yon poor man, he smiled and let me know his proffer of
the duck-pond was but to get the man out of the hands of his
ill-wishers, for he meant to draw the Quaker within his gates and then
have them shut as if by mistake on the rabble, who were already growing
aweary with the length of the way, and so were dropping off by twos and
threes.'

'So thou hast had thy labour for thy pains?' says Mrs. Golding, smiling
as one well pleased.

'Not altogether,' said Andrew, 'for the Squire wills us to turn into the
byway here, and keep from the high road awhile, lest we meet the baser
rascals coming back, in all their fury and disappointment.'

'Good counsel,' said Mrs. Golding; 'we will take it.' And so we kept to
that byway for a mile or so; and it was rough uneasy riding, though a
pretty green lane enough.

Althea said to me half aside, 'We had had none of these discomforts, if
we had ridden as we were wont with our father, in a good coach like
gentlewomen, and not a-horseback in the country fashion;' the first
discontented word she had said, and Mrs. Golding hearing it,--

'Child,' said she, 'I cannot away with these coaches, they are proud
lazy inventions, and nothing like so wholesome as this our old country