"And so will I," returned the clergyman. "Is anyone with you, my
boy?"

"No, your reverence, no one save the beasts."

"Then come up here," said his father. "Someone has been playing
here, I see."

"Patience and I, father, last summer."

"No one else?"

"No, no one. We put those stones and those sticks when we made a
fire there last year, and no one has meddled with them since."

"Thou and Patience," said Mr. Holworth thoughtfully. "Not Jephthah
nor the little maid?"

"No, sir," replied Steadfast, "we would not let them know, because we
wanted a place to ourselves."

For in truth the quiet ways and little arrangements of these two had
often been much disturbed by the rough elder brother who teased and
laughed at them, and by the troublesome little sister, who put her
fingers into everything.

The Vicar and the Churchwarden looked at one another, and John Kenton
muttered, "True as steel."