With that he turned away, and Reginald and Ann went out together.
"Surely it is God's hand," said Ann. "We were well-nigh despairing, you and I, Reginald, and now we have a friend."
"Yes," answered Reginald, "not too soon; the world seemed very dark, and now, well, I see the sun."
Ann looked up and smiled at him.
"So do I," she said, and they went on together with light hearts. The young are so glad to cast a burden off their shoulders, to greet the sunshine, to welcome hope; it is the prerogative of youth!
CHAPTER XIII
The Hamlet of St. Mary's
It was but a tiny village nestling in the midst of moors and fells. The river Eden ran through it, and all around was the richest verdure, woods and plantations, such as can only be seen in Westmorland, one of the smallest but also one of the most fertile counties in England.
It was just before harvest time--the golden corn waved over many an acre. A tiny church stood with its white turret just under the hill-side; beside it was the vicarage, and there for many a year the Rev. John Ewan had dwelt and ministered to a scattered moorland flock. He had come there as a young man with a young wife. She lay in the little churchyard, and of their three children there remained but one, a girl of sixteen summers, who kept house and served her father with untiring devotion. She had never been beyond the radius of the three counties which bound Westmorland, and she had no ambition to wander. She had no companion save her father; she rode and walked with him. He had taught her all she knew, and that was considerably more than most girls, for the winters were long and the days short, and in the evening, over the fireside, she read much, and she listened to her father as he spoke to her of things of the past. She knew much of the history of England; it was a passion with her, and she had ever been a rigid loyalist, as her father was.
Strange to tell, throughout the Civil War this little village and its minister had been left unmolested, and yet it was at no great distance from Appleby; but then it was such a little place, and the farmhouses were so scattered. Often during those days of internal warfare they had seen men on horseback, Roundheads and Royalists alike, ride in hot haste through the village, and Jessie had longed for them to stop. She would have dearly loved to speak with them, but they passed on. There was nothing to tempt them in the dozen low thatched cottages which clustered together; there was no inn for them to halt at for refreshment, so they invariably rode on. Almost at the top of the hill, beyond which the moorlands stretched, there was an old farmhouse. No one knew to whom by rights it belonged. Some said it was part of the De Lisle estate; others that it was tithe land, and the vicar could lay claim to it. Be that as it may, it had been long uninhabited, when one morning a serving-man stopped at the vicarage gate and asked to see the minister.