CHAPTER VIII.


HOW A STRANGE MESSENGER BROUGHT US NEWS OF ANDREW.

And now we had a time of unceasing disquiet. It was soon noised abroad
that the heir to the Grange was missing, and his house and lands left
masterless; and there presently appeared first one and then another of
the Goldings, far-off kinsmen of Andrew; these persons came to the house
to examine it, and talked much with the Standfasts; also they tried to
find out what my sister and I knew of Andrew's doings; some of them went
to York to talk with Aunt Golding's lawyer; and it was not hard to see
that they would have been glad to get certain news of Andrew's death.
This made their coming hateful to us; but the house not being our own,
we could not shut them out. We did what we could to get news of Andrew;
but there was small comfort in the scanty intelligence we could glean,
since it all pointed to his having indeed gone up to London, and having
preached woe and judgment on his way thither.

And had it not been that we sometimes got comfortable letters from Mr.
Truelocke, telling of his quiet untroubled life in the Dale country, I
had now been unhappy enough; for we were ever hearing tales of the evil
handling of all kinds of Dissenters; even young maidens and little
children being pelted, whipped, and chained for the crime of being of
Quaker parentage and belief, while hundreds of Nonconformists of that
sort and other sorts were thrown into prison and left there. I suppose
it was the mad doings of the Fifth Monarchy men, as folks called them,
which stirred up such a persecuting spirit; so at least said the people
of our village, who now began to come about us again, with some show of