Vicar. Just at the end of
January, Sam Brattle came up to the Vicarage and told Mr. Fenwick
that he was going to leave the mill. Sam was dressed very decently;
but he was attired in an un-Bullhampton fashion, which was not
pleasant to Mr. Fenwick's eyes; and there was about him an air which
seemed to tell of filial disobedience and personal independence.

"But you mean to come back again, Sam?" said the Vicar.

"Well, sir; I don't know as I do. Father and I has had words."

"And that is to be a reason why you should leave him? You speak of
your father as though he were no more to you than another man."

"I wouldn't a' borne not a tenth of it from no other man, Mr.
Fenwick."

"Well--and what of that? Is there any measure of what is due by you
to your father? Remember, Sam, I know your father well."

"You do, sir."

"He is a very just man, and he is very fond of you. You are the apple
of his eye, and now you would bring his gray hairs with sorrow to the
grave."

"You ask mother, sir, and she'll tell you how it is. I just said a
word to him,--a word as was right to be said, and he turned upon me,
and bade me go away and come back no more."

"Do you mean that he has banished you from the mill?"

"He said what I tells you. He told mother afterwards, that if so as I
would promise never to mention that thing again, I might come and go
as I pleased. But I wasn't going to make no such promise. I up and
told him so; and then he--cursed me."

For a moment or two the Vicar was silent, thinking whether in this
affair Sam had been most wrong, or the old man. Of course he was
hearing but one side of the question. "What was it, Sam, that he
forbade you to mention?"

"It don't matter now, sir; only I thought I'd better come and tell
you, along of your being the bail, sir."

"Do you mean that you are going to leave Bullhampton altogether?"

"To leave it altogether, Mr. Fenwick. I ain't doing no good here."

"And why shouldn't you do good? Where can you do more good?"

"It can't be good to be having words with father day after day."

"But, Sam, I don't think you can go away. You are bound by the
magistrates' orders. I don't speak for myself, but I fear the police
would be after you."

"And is it to go on allays,--that a chap can't move to better
hisself, because them fellows can't catch the men as murdered old
Trumbull? That can't be law,--nor yet justice." Upon this there arose
a discussion in which the Vicar endea