e so important as that which I have to say. For the
love of God, Mr. Brattle,--for the love you bear your wife and
children, endure with me for ten minutes." Then he paused, and walked
on, and Mr. Brattle was still at his elbow. "My friend, I have seen
your daughter."

"Which daughter?" said the miller, arresting his step.

"Your daughter Carry, Mr. Brattle." Then the old man turned round and
would have hurried back to the mill without a word; but the Vicar
held him by his coat. "If I have ever been a friend to you or yours
listen to me now one minute."

"Do I come to your house and tell you of your sorrows and your shame?
Let me go!"

"Mr. Brattle, if you will stretch forth your hand, you may save her.
She is your own child--your flesh and blood. Think how easy it is for
a poor girl to fall,--how great is the temptation and how quick, and
how it comes without knowledge of the evil that is to follow! How
small is the sin, and how terrible the punishment! Your friends, Mr.
Brattle, have forgiven you worse sins than ever she has committed."

"I never shamed none of them," said he, struggling on his way back to
the mill.

"It is that, then;--your own misfortune and not the girl's sin that
would harden your heart against your own child? You will let her
perish in the streets, not because she has fallen, but because she
has hurt you in her fall! Is that to be a father? Is that to be a
man? Mr. Brattle, think better of yourself, and dare to obey the
instincts of your heart."

But by this time the miller had escaped, and was striding off in
furious silence to the mill. The Vicar, oppressed by a sense of utter
failure, feeling that his interference had been absolutely valueless,
that the man's wrath and constancy were things altogether beyond his
reach, stood where he had been left, hardly daring to return to the
mill and say a word or two to the women there. But at last he did
go back. He knew well that Brattle himself would not be seen in the
house till his present mood was over. After any encounter of words
he would go and work in silence for half a day, and would seldom or
never refer again to what had taken place; he would never, so thought
the Vicar, refer to the encounter which had just taken place; but he
would remember it always, and it might be that he would never again
speak in friendship to a man who had offended him so deeply.

After a moment's thought he determined to tell the wife, and informed
her and