"Well, Mr. Henry Falkland Passmore, you are an uncommon cool hand!" asserted his father. "And who helped you to get your Jacobite safely away, I wonder?"
"Celia and Patient Irvine."
"Did Patient know where he was, Harry?" asked his mother, gravely.
"Not when Wallace questioned her. I told her afterwards."
But the astonishment of the whole group faded before that of old Cicely Aggett.
"Well, I do declare!" was what she said. "If ever anybody did! No, nobody couldn't never have guessed the like of this—that they couldn't! I've lived in this house three-and-thirty years come Martlemas, and I never, never did see nor hear nothing this like in all my born days! Only just to think! And them things I took for rats and ghosteses was Papishes? Eh, but I'd a cruel deal rather have a hundred rats and mice nor one of them wicked Papishes, and ghosteses too, pretty nigh! Well, to be sure, my dears, the Lord has preserved us wonderful! and 'tis uncommon thankful we'd ought to be."
"You will sleep to-night, Madam, I trust," said Patient, that evening, as she bound up Celia's hair.
"And you, my poor Patient!" said Celia. "I fear you slept not much last night."
"No, Madam," answered Patient, quietly; "I watched unto prayer."
"Well, I hope Edward is quite safe by this time," sighed Celia.