On the whole Stead was proud to see Jeph holding his own, though the youngest among these determined-looking men. These two years had made a man of the rough, idle, pleasure-loving boy, and a man after the Ironsides' fashion, grave, self-contained, and self-depending. Stead had been more like the elder than the younger brother in old times, but he felt Jeph immeasurably his elder in the new, unfamiliar atmosphere; and yet the boy had a strong sense that all was not right; that these were interlopers in the kind old Dean's house; that the talk about Baal was mere absurdity; and the profanation of the Cathedral would have been utterly shocking to his good father. His mind, however, worked slowly, and he would have had nothing to say even if he could have ventured to speak; but he was very anxious to get away; and when Jeph would have kept him to hear the serjeant expound a chapter of Revelation, he pleaded the necessity of getting home in time to milk the cows, and made his escape.
On the whole it was a relief that Jeph was too much occupied with his military duties to make visits to his home. It might not have been over easy to keep the peace between him and Emlyn, fiery little Royalist as she was, and too much used to being petted and fascinating everyone by her saucy audacity to be likely to be afraid of him.
If Patience crossed her she would have recourse to Stead, and he could seldom resist her coaxing, or be entirely disabused of the notion that his sister expected too much of her. And perhaps it was true. Patience was scarcely likely to understand differences of character and temperament, and not merely to recollect that Emlyn was only eighteen months younger than she had been when she had been forced into the position of the house mother. So, while Emlyn's wayward fancies were a great trial, Steadfast's sympathy with them was a greater one.
Stead continued to see Jeph when taking in the market produce, for which he was always duly paid. Jeph also wished the whole family to come in on Sunday to profit by the preaching of some of the great Independent lights; but Stead, after trying it once, felt so sure that Patience would be miserable at anything so unaccustomed, so thunderous, and, as it seemed to him, so abusive, that he held to it that the distance was too great, and that the cattle could not be left. The soldiery seemed to him to spend their spare time in defacing the many churches of the city, chiefly in order to do what they called purifying them from all idols, in which term they included every sort of carving or picture, or even figures on monuments.
And in this work of destruction a chest containing church plate had been come upon, making their work greedy instead of only mischievous.
When all the churches in Bristol had been ransacked, they began to extend their search to the parish churches in the neighbourhood, and Stead began to be very anxious, though he hoped and believed that the cave was a perfectly safe place.
CHAPTER XIV. THE QUESTION.
"Dogged as does it."—TROLLOPE.
"Stead, Stead," cried Rusha, running up to him, as he was slowly digging over his stubble field to prepare it for the next crop, "the soldiers are in Elmwood."