"Your pardon, Madam! but are you Squire Passmore's daughter?"
"Yes, I am Celia Passmore," she replied, thinking nothing of the query.
"Be not too certain of it," answered the stranger, softly. "God and our Lady bless you!"
And gently taking the offered coin from Celia's hand, he withdrew before she could recover from her horror at the discovery that she had been conversing with a Papist. When she recovered herself, his words came back to her with strange meaning. The blessing she took to be merely his way of thanking her for the alms which she had bestowed. But had he not told her not to be too sure of something? Of what? Had she said anything to him beyond telling her name? Celia concluded that the poor fellow must have been wrong in his head, and began to feel very compassionate towards him. She sauntered back to the house, and into old Cicely's room, where she found its occupant mending stockings, with her old brown Bible lying open on the table before her.
"Cicely, I have had such an odd adventure."
"Have you so, Mrs. Celia? What was it, my dear?"
"Why, a poor man begged of me over the hedge, and said such strange things!—asked me my name, and told me not to be too sure of it! Was it not droll?"
Instead of a laugh rising to her lips, as Celia expected, a strange light sprang to old Cicely's eyes as she lifted her head and gazed at her. Not a glad light—far from it; a wild, startled, sad expression, which Celia could not understand.
"Ay, sweetheart!" said the old woman, in a voice not like her usual tones. "Did he so? And what manner of man?"
"Oh, not bad-looking," answered Celia. "A comely man, with black hair and eyes. His clothes had been good, but they were very bad now, and he was a Papist, for he said, 'Our Lady bless you.'"