[Quickrip-cvs] Er--the only one, I verily bel

[Barch S. <sul...@fr...>]

T till daylight, without coming to any conclusion as to what we were
best to do about it. CHAPTER VIII. HOW A STRANGE MESSENGER BROUGHT US
NEWS OF ANDREW. And now we had a time of unceasing disquiet. It was
soon noised abroad that the heir to the
Grange was missing, and his house and lands left masterless; and
there presently appeared
first one and then another of the Goldings,
far-off kinsmen of Andrew; these persons came to the house to examine
it,
and talked much with the Standfasts; also they tried to find out what
my sister and I knew of Andrew's doings; some of them went to York to
talk with Aunt Golding's lawyer; and it was not hard to see that they
would have been glad to get certain news of Andrew's death. This made
their coming hateful
to us; but the house not being our own, we could not shut them out.
We did what we could to get news of Andrew; but there was small
comfort in the scanty intelligence we could glean, since
it all pointed to his having indeed gone up to London, and having
preached
woe and judgment on his way thither. And had it not been that we
sometimes got comfortable

letters from Mr. Truelocke, telling of his quiet untroubled life in
the Dale country, I had now been unhappy enough; for

we were ever hearing tales of the evil handling of all kinds of
Dissenters; even young maidens and little children being pelted,
whipped, and chained for the crime of being of Quaker parentage and
belief, while hundreds
of Nonconformists of that sort and other sorts were thrown into
prison and left there. I suppose it was the mad doings of the Fifth
Monarchy men, as folks called
them, which stirred up such a persecuting spirit; so at least said
the people

of our village, who now began to come about us again, with some show
of former kindness; but they proved very Job's comforters to us, by
reason of the frightful stories they loved to retail. There was one
good soul whom I loved well to see, who yet gave me many a
heart-quake; it was a Mrs. Ashford, wife to a small farmer near us; a
lad of hers had sailed