Clare Avery | Page 2

mainly given in the towns by apothecaries, and in the country by
herbalists and "wise women." There were no Dissenters--except the
few who remained Romanists; and perhaps there were not likely to be
many, when the fine for non-attendance at the parish church was
twenty pounds per month. Parochial relief was unknown, and any old
woman obnoxious to her neighbours was likely to be drowned as a
witch. Lastly, by the Bull of excommunication of Pope Pius the Fifth,
issued in April, 1569, Queen Elizabeth had been solemnly "cut off from
the unity of Christ's Body," and "deprived of her pretended right to the
Crown of England," while all who obeyed or upheld her were placed
under a terrible curse. [Note 2.]
Nineteen years had passed since that triumphant 17th of November
which had seen all England in a frenzy of joy on the accession of
Elizabeth Tudor. They were at most very young men and women who
could not remember the terrible days of Mary, and the glad welcome

given to her sister. Still warm at the heart of England lay the memory
of the Marian martyrs; still deep and strong in her was hatred of every
shadow of Popery. The petition had not yet been erased from the
Litany--why should it ever have been?--"From the Bishop of Rome and
all his enormities, good Lord, deliver us!"
On the particular afternoon whereon the story opens, one of the
dreariest points of the landscape was the house towards which Hal
Dockett's steps were bent. It was of moderate size, and might have been
very comfortable if somebody had taken pains to make it so. But it
looked as if the pains had not been taken. Half the windows were
covered by shutters; the wainscot was sadly in want of a fresh coat of
paint; the woodbine, which should have been trained up beside the
porch, hung wearily down, as if it were tired of trying to climb when
nobody helped it; the very ivy was ragged and dusty. The doors shut
with that hollow sound peculiar to empty uncurtained rooms, and
groaned, as they opened, over the scarcity of oil. And if the spectator
had passed inside, he would have seen that out of the whole house, only
four rooms were inhabited beside the kitchen and its dependencies. In
all the rest, the dusty furniture was falling to pieces from long neglect,
and the spiders carried on their factories at their own pleasure.
One of these four rooms, a long, narrow chamber, on the upper floor,
gave signs of having been inhabited very recently. On the square table
lay a quantity of coarse needlework, which somebody seemed to have
bundled together and left hastily; and on one of the hard,
straight-backed chairs was a sorely-disabled wooden doll, of the
earliest Dutch order, with mere rudiments, of arms and legs, and
deprived by accidents of a great portion of these. The needlework said
plainly that there must be a woman in the dreary house, and the doll,
staring at the ceiling with black expressionless eyes, spoke as distinctly
for the existence of a child.
Suddenly the door of this room opened with a plaintive creak, and a
little woman, on the elderly side of middle life, put in her head.
A bright, energetic, active little woman she seemed,--not the sort of
person who might be expected to put up meekly with dim windows and

dusty floors.
"Marry La'kin!" [a corruption of "Mary, little Lady!"] she said aloud.
"Of a truth, what a charge be these childre!"
The cause of this remark was hardly apparent, since no child was to be
seen; but the little woman came further into the room, her gestures soon
showing that she was looking for a child who ought to have been
visible.
"Well! I've searched every chamber in this house save the Master's
closet. Where can yon little popinjay [parrot] have hid her? Marry
La'kin!"
This expletive was certainly not appreciated by her who used it.
Nothing could much more have astonished or shocked Barbara
Polwhele [a fictitious person]--than whom no more uncompromising
Protestant breathed between John o' Groat's and the Land's End--than to
discover that since she came into the room, she had twice invoked the
assistance of Saint Mary the Virgin.
Barbara's search soon brought her to the conclusion that the child she
sought was not in that quarter. She shut the door, and came out into a
narrow gallery, from one side of which a wooden staircase ran down
into the hall. It was a wide hall of vaulted stone, hung with faded
tapestry, old and wanting repair, like everything else in its vicinity.
Across the hall Barbara trotted with short, quick steps, and opening a
door at the further end, went into the one