Peace! the peace the old Rector had called down upon her seemed to fill Mary Gifford's heart; and that quiet hour of the Sunday noontide remained in her memory in the coming days, as the last she was to know for many a long year.
'The sports, mother!' Ambrose said, rousing himself at last, and struggling to his feet. 'Let us go to see the sports.'
'Would you please me, Ambrose, by going home instead?'
Ambrose's lips quivered, and the colour rushed to his face.
'I want to see the sports,' he said; 'you promised you would take me.'
Then Mary Gifford rose, and, looking down on the child's troubled face, where keen disappointment was written, she took his hand, saying,—
'Come, then; but if the crowd is great, and you are jostled and pushed, you must come away, nor plague me to stay. I am not stout enough to battle with a throng, and it may be that harm will come to you.'
They were at the Rectory gates now, and people were seen in all their Sunday trim hurrying towards the field where the tilting match was to take place.
Mary turned towards the square, on either side of which stood the old timbered houses by the lych gate, and asked a man she knew, if the horsemen who were to tilt in the field were to pass that way.
'For,' she added, 'I would fain wait here till they have ridden on. I might get into danger with the child from the horses' feet.'