ed, and everything Mr. Tebrick
said confirmed what he had been led to expect he would find at Rylands.
When he was outside, however, he asked Mr. Tebrick:

"You don't have many visitors now, eh?"

"No--I never see anyone if I can avoid it. You are the first person I
have spoken to for months."

"Quite right, too, my dear fellow. I quite understand--in the
circumstances." Then the cleric shook him by the hand, got into his
carriage and drove away.

"At any rate," he said to himself, "there will be no scandal." He was
relieved also because Mr. Tebrick had said nothing about going abroad to
disseminate the Gospel. Canon Fox had been alarmed by the letter, had
not answered it, and thought that it was always better to let things be,
and never to refer to anything unpleasant. He did not at all want to
recommend Mr. Tebrick to the Bible Society if he were mad. His
eccentricities would never be noticed at Stokoe. Besides that, Mr.
Tebrick had said he was happy.

He was sorry for Mr. Tebrick too, and he said to himself that the queer
girl, his niece, must have married him because he was the first man she
had met. He reflected also that he was never likely to see her again and
said aloud, when he had driven some little way:

"Not an affectionate disposition," then to his coachman: "No, that's all
right. Drive on, Hopkins."

When Mr. Tebrick was alone he rejoiced exceedingly in his solitary life.
He understood, or so he fancied, what it was to be happy, and that he
had found complete happiness now, living from day to day, careless of
the future, surrounded every morning by playful and affectionate little
creatures whom he loved tenderly, and sitting beside their mother, whose
simple happiness was the source of his own.

"True happiness," he said to himself, "is to be found in bestowing love;
there is no such happiness as that of the mother for her babe, unless I
have attained it in mine for my vixen and her children."

With these feelings he waited impatiently for the hour on the morrow
when he might hasten to them once more.

When, however, he had toiled up the hillside, to the earth, taking
infinite precaution not to tread down the bracken, or make a beaten path
which might lead others to that secret spot, he found to his surprise
that Silvia was not there and that there were no cubs to be seen either.
He called to them, but it was in vain, and at last he laid himself on
the mossy bank beside the earth and waited.