"Have you ever sought his confidence?" asked the travelled brother,
a question evidently scarcely understood, for the reply was, "I have
always required of my sons to speak the truth, nor have they failed
of late years save this unfortunate Peregrine."

"And," said Sir Peregrine, "if the unlucky lad actually supposes
himself to be no human being, admonitions and chastisements would
naturally be vain."

"I cannot believe it," exclaimed the Major. "'Tis true, as I now
remember, I once came on a couple of beldames, my wife's nurse and
another, who has since been ducked for witchcraft, and found them
about to flog the babe with nettles, and lay him in the thorn hedge
because he was a sickly child, whom, forsooth, they took to be a
changeling; but I forbade the profane folly to be ever again
mentioned in my household, nor did I ever hear thereof again."

"There are a good many more things mentioned in a household,
brother, than the master is wont to hear of," remarked Sir
Peregrine.

Dr. Woodford then begged as a personal favour for an individual
examination of the family and servants on their opinion. The master
was reluctant thus, as he expressed it, to go a-fooling, but his
brother backed the Doctor up, and further prevented a general
assembly to put one another to shame, but insisted on the witnesses
being called in one by one. Oliver, the first summoned, was
beginning to be somewhat less overawed by his father than in his
earlier boyhood. To the inquiry what he thought of his brother
Peregrine, he made a tentative sort of reply, that he was a strange