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§ II

"Lord save us! what is that?" cried Elisabeth Alard. "Husband, we have the noisiest set of servants in the country."

"I'll go and see what's toward," said Kit Oxenbrigge.

"Yes, go—and send them back into the kitchen. I've given orders many times that only the footmen are to come into the hall."

Oxenbrigge went out, and came back grinning.

"They're asking you to come out, Squire. They say there's an anabaptist in the kitchen, who will tell our fortunes."

"An anabaptist!" cried Elisabeth. "Abominable!"

"'Tis agäunst the law," said her husband. "By Mary-gipsy! I wonder he dare come into a magistrate's house. Bring him here, Kit, and I'll sentence him to the stocks."

"Aye, do," said Catherine. "Most like he's a Gospeller or a Mumpsimus man."

"I never heard of an anabaptist who told fortunes," said Robert Douce in his slow, foreign-sounding English.

Oxenbrigge went out again, and soon came back with a seedy-looking fellow, dressed in the style of a small shopkeeper, in dark homespun and a noggen shirt. In one hand he clutched his shapeless felt hat, in the other a sugar-loaf of stout parchment, black, and pasted with silver stars. Behind him the door was full of the craning, goggling faces of Conster's maids and men.