The culprit eluded all pursuit on this occasion; but Mrs. Woodford
soon after was told that the Major had caught Peregrine listening at
the little south door of the choir, had collared him, and flogged
him worse than ever, for being seduced by the sounds of the popish
and idolatrous worship, and had told all his sons that the like
chastisement awaited them if they presumed to cross the threshold of
the steeple house.

Nevertheless the Senior Prefect of the college boys, when about to
come out of the Cathedral on Sunday morning, found his gown pinned
with a skewer so fast to the seat that he was only set free at the
expense of a rent. Public opinion decided that the deed had been
done by the imp of Oakshott, and accordingly the whole of the
Wykeham scholars set on him with hue and cry the first time they saw
him outside the Close, and hunted him as far as St. Cross, where he
suddenly and utterly vanished from their sight.

Mrs. Woodford agreed with Anne that it was a very strange story.
For how could he have been in the Cathedral at service time when it
was well known that Major Oakshott had all his family together at
his own form of worship in his house? Anne, who had been in hopes
that her mother would be thus convinced of his supernatural powers,
looked disappointed, but she had afterwards to confess that Charles
Archfield had found out that it was his cousin Sedley Archfield who
had played the audacious trick, in revenge for a well-merited
tunding from the Prefect.

"And then saddled it on young Oakshott?" asked her mother.

"Charley says one such matter more or less makes no odds to the Whig