l had seen the girl walk away and had recognised her, but he had
not seen what had preceded her departure. Instantly, however, he
penetrated the secret, and his first words when Robert presented himself
were--

"Why, Robert, that was Miss Shipton."

"Yes, father."

"What were she and you doing here?"

"We happened to meet."

There was something in the tone in which Robert replied which showed the
father at once that his son's confidence in him was not illimitable, as
he had believed it to be hitherto. It is a heart-breaking time for
father and mother when they first become aware that the deepest secrets
in their children are intrusted not to them, but to others. Michael felt
repelled and was silent; but after a while, as they both were leaning
over the garden-wall and gazing upon the water, he said--

"Mere worldlings, those Shiptons, Robert!"

"I do not know much about them, but they seem an honest, good sort of
people."

"Ah! yes, my son; they may be all that. But what is it? They are not
the Lord's."

Robert made no reply, and presently father and son left the house and
went back to Perran to their work, uncommunicative.

It was a peculiar misfortune for a man of Michael's temperament that he
had nobody save his son who could assist him in the shaping of his
resolves or in the correction of his conclusions. Brought up in a narrow
sect, self-centred, moody, he needed continually that wholesome twist to
another point of the compass which intercourse with equals gives. He was
continually prone to subjection under the rigorous domination of a single
thought, from which he deduced inference after inference, ending in
absurdity, which would have been dissipated in an instant by discussion.
We complain of people because they are not original, but we do not ask
what their originality, if they had any, would be worth. Better a
thousand times than the originality of most of us is the average
common-sense which is not our own exclusively, but shared with millions
of our fellow-beings, and is not due to any one of them. Michael ought
to have talked over the events of the morning with his wife; but alas!
his wife's counsel was never sought, and not worth having. He did seek
counsel at the throne of heavenly grace that night, but the answer given
by the oracle was framed by himself. He was in sore straits. Something
seemed to have interposed itself between him and Robert, and when,
instead of the old unvei