ler, when he had entered the room and come among them, stood
with his two hands resting on the round table, and thus he addressed
them: "It was a bad time with us when the girl, whom we had all loved
a'most too well, forgot herself and us, and brought us to shame,--we
who had never known shame afore,--and became a thing so vile as I
won't name it. It was well nigh the death o' me, I know."

"Oh, father!" exclaimed Fanny.

"Hold your peace, Fanny, and let me say my say out. It was very
bad then; and when she come back to us, and was took in, so that
she might have her bit to eat under an honest roof, it was bad
still;--for she was a shame to us as had never been shamed afore. For
myself I felt so, that though she was allays near me, my heart was
away from her, and she was not one with me, not as her sister is one,
and her mother, who never know'd a thought in her heart as wasn't fit
for a woman to have there." By this time Carry was sobbing on her
mother's bosom, and it would be difficult to say whose affliction was
the sharpest. "But them as falls may right themselves, unless they be
chance killed as they falls. If my child be sorry for her sin--"

"Oh, father, I am sorry."

"I will bring myself to forgive her. That it won't stick here," and
the miller struck his heart violently with his open palm, "I won't be
such a liar as to say. For there ain't no good in a lie. But there
shall be never a word about it more out o' my mouth,--and she may
come to me again as my child."

There was a solemnity about the old man's speech which struck them
all with so much awe that none of them for a while knew how to move
or to speak. Fanny was the first to stir, and she came to him and put
her arm through his and leaned her head upon his shoulder.

"Get me my breakfast, girl," he said to her. But before he had moved
Carry had thrown herself weeping on his bosom. "That will do," he
said. "That will do. Sit down and eat thy victuals." Then there was
not another word said, and the breakfast passed off in silence.

Though the women talked of what had occurred throughout the day, not
a word more dropped from the miller's mouth upon the subject. When
he came in to dinner he took his food from Carry's hand and thanked
her,--as he would have thanked his elder daughter,--but he did not
call her by her name. Much had to be done in preparing for the
morrow's journey, and for the days through which they two might be
detained at the assizes.