"And its service?"
"Ay, and its service."
"Who is the lad you have with you?" Simon Gridley asked keenly.
"He is a Patten," the butler answered reluctantly; "but he has neither house nor land, nor more in the world than the clothes he stands up in."
The answer took both the man and the woman by surprise. They stood gazing as with one accord at the boy, who, with his lips trembling, changed feet and shifted his eyes from one stern face to another.
"I have heard something of that," the elder Gridley said, with a stern smile.
"He comes of a bad brood."
"Nevertheless, you will not refuse him shelter," his brother answered. "He is a child, and I have nowhere else to take him."
"Why take him at all?" the Puritan snarled fiercely. "What have you to do with the children of transgression? Have you not sins enough of your own to answer for?"
The butler did not reply, and for a moment the boy's fate seemed to hang in the balance. Then the woman spoke. "Bring him in," she said harshly and suddenly. "It may be that he is a brand snatched from the burning."