A Little Wizard - Weyman Stanley John

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to be no farther off than Appleby. Any day they might descend on Settle, or a handful of them pass the farmstead, and levy contributions in the old high-handed Royalist fashion. Simon and Luke, wearing grimmer faces than usual, cleaned their pikes, and got out the old buff-coats which had lain by since Naseby, and held long conferences with their friends at Settle. The boy, aimless and without companions, acquired a habit of wandering in and out during these preparations, and more than once his pale face and dwarfish form appearing suddenly in their midst gave Luke Gridley, who was apt to weave what he saw into the unsubstantial texture of his dreams, a start beyond the ordinary.

      "Who is that child?" he said one day, looking after him with a troubled face. "There used to be no child here."

      "The child?" Simon exclaimed, glancing at him impatiently. "What has the child to do with us? Let it be."

      "Let it be?" said the other, softly. "Ay, for a season. For a season. Yet remember that it is written, 'A child shall discover the matter.'"

      "Tush!" Simon answered angrily. "This is folly. Isn't it written also, resist the devil, and he will fly from you!"

      "Ay, the devil-and his angels," Luke repeated gently.

      Simon shrugged his shoulders. Nevertheless he too, when he next met the lad wandering aimlessly about, looked at him with new eyes. Though he was subject to no active delusions himself, he had a strong and superstitious respect for his brother's fantasies. He began to watch the boy about, and surprising him one day in a solitary place in the act of forming patterns on the turf with stones, noted with a feeling of dread that these took the shape of a circle and a triangle, with other cabalistic figures as odd as they were unfamiliar. He would not at another time have given such a trifle a second thought. But we see things through the glasses of our own prepossessions. The morose and rugged fanatic, who feared no odds, and whom no persecution could bend, looked askance at the child playing unconsciously before him, looked dubiously at the grey moor strewn with monoliths, and finally with a shiver turned and walked homewards.

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