seventy years or more.
Dear, dear, it was behind that bookcase in a hole in the board that I
used to hide my flint and steel which I used for making little fires
at the foot of Caresfoot's Staff. There is a mark on the bark now. I
was mischievous as a little lad, and thought that the old tree would
make a fine blaze. I was audacious, too, and delighted to hide the
things in my father's study under the very nose of authority. Ay, and
other memories come upon me as I think. It was here upon this very
table that they stood my mother's coffin. I was standing where you are
now when I wrenched open the half-fastened shell to kiss her once more
before they screwed her down for ever. I wonder would you do as much
for me? I loved my mother, and that was fifty years ago. I wonder
shall we meet again? That was on the first of May, a long-gone first
of May. They threw branches of blackthorn bloom upon her coffin. Odd,
very odd! But business, lad, business--what was it? Ah! I know," and
his manner changed in a second and became hard and stern. "About
Maria, have you come to a decision?"

Philip moved restlessly on his chair, poked the logs to a brighter
blaze, and threw on a handful of pine chips from a basket by his side
before he answered. Then he said--

"No, I have not."

"Your reluctance is very strange, Philip, I cannot understand it. I
suppose that you are not already married, are you, Philip?"

There was a lurid calm about the old man's face as he asked this
question that was very dreadful in its intensity. Under the shadow of
his thick black eyebrows, gleams of light glinted and flickered in the
expanded pupils, as before the outburst of a tempest the forked
lightning flickers in the belly of the cloud. His voice too was
constrained and harsh.

Owing to the position of his father's head, Philip could not see this
play of feature, but he heard the voice and thought that it meant
mischief. He had but a second to decide between confession and the lie
that leaped to his lips. An inward conviction told him that his father
was not long for this world, was it worth while to face his anger when
matters might yet be kept dark till the end? The tone of the voice--
ah! how he mistook its meaning--deceived him. It was not, he thought,
possible that his father could know anything. Had he possessed a
little more knowledge of the world, he might have judged differently.

"Married, no, indeed; what put that idea into your head?" And