But there's a strangeness,
a sort of haunting fascination in it all. To you, who don't know the
people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly. But it isn't
the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in life. It's
the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or evil.

The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch
shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good
news. John Ford himself opened the door to me.

He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an intruder;
then he said:

"I have not spoken to my granddaughter--I waited to see Dan Treffry."

He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on
his shoulders. He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out of
order, he had not taken his clothes off, I think. He isn't a man whom
you can pity. I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the matter at
all. When I told him where we had been, he said:

"It was good of you to take this trouble. That you should have had to!
But since such things have come to pass--" He made a gesture full of
horror. He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was struggling
against a mortal hurt. Presently he asked:

"You saw him, you say? He admitted this marriage? Did he give an
explanation?"

I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear. Before this old man, with
his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a brief for
Zachary, and must try to do him justice.

"Let me understand," he said at last. "He stole her, you say, to make
sure; and deserts her within a fortnight."

"He says he meant to take her--"

"Do you believe that?"

Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window. How long
she had been there I don't know.

"Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?" she cried out.

I could only nod.

"Did you hear him your own self?"

"Yes."

She stamped her foot.

"But he promised! He promised!"

John Ford went towards her.

"Don't touch me, grandfather! I hate every one! Let him do what he
likes, I don't care."

John Ford's face turned quite grey.

"Pasiance," he said, "did you want to leave me so much?"

She looked straight at us, and said sharply:

"What's the good of telling stories. I can't help its hurting you."

"What did you think you would find away from here?"

She laughed.

"Find? I don't know--nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway. Now I
suppos