"How could
he like to go among all those cruel fighting men? You won't go,
Stead?"
"No, indeed, I have got something else to do."
The children were hard at work all the time. They cleared out the
inside of their hovel, which had a floor of what was called lime ash,
trodden hard, and not much cracked. Probably other hermits in
earlier times had made the place habitable before the expelled monk
whom the Kentons' great-grandfather recollected; for the cell, though
rude, was wonderfully strong, and the stone walls were very stout and
thick, after the fashion of the middle ages. There was a large flat
stone to serve as a hearth, and an opening at the top for smoke with
a couple of big slaty stones bent towards one another over it as a
break to the force of the rain. The children might have been worse
off though there was no window, and no door to close the opening.
That mattered the less in the summer weather, and before winter came,
Stead thought he could close it with a mat made of the bulrushes that
stood up in the brook, lifting their tall, black heads.
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