"I am not so sure that it is not the other way," the man grumbled in an undertone. "Why, wife," he went on, raising his voice, "who is there to say anything against us. Don't I go regularly to mass, and send our good priest a fine fish or the best cut off the joint two or three times a week? What can I do more? Anyone would think to hear you talk that I was a heretic."

"I think you are more fool than heretic," his wife said angrily; "and that is the best hope for us. But come in, boy, and sit down; my husband will keep you gossiping at the door for the next hour if you would listen to him."

"I shall not be sorry to sit down, mistress," Ned said entering the low roofed room. "I have walked from Axel since morning."

"That is a good long walk truly;" the woman said. "Are you going on to Brussels? If so, your nearest way would have been by Antwerp."

"I took the wrong road," Ned said; "and as they told me that there was but a mile or two difference between them, I thought I might as well keep on the one I had first taken."