e Bishop's son from Wells; and there's no want of help;
and they'll try and hunt him out."

"Hunt who out?"

"Why, the brute that caused the master to fall off Mavis's back, of
course. I never did hold with master being so free riding over the
Mendips at late hours. I've said so scores of times--_scores_. But
there, he had the heart of a lion, he had."

_Had! had!_ How the word smote on Joyce's ear.

"_Has_ father--_has_--" she murmured, "he cannot, cannot be--dead!"

After this Joyce said no more. They went at a fair pace along the lonely
lanes; they passed through villages where the men were smoking pipes at
the cottage doors, the women standing by with babies in their arms,
while dusty, dirty little urchins played at "cross sticks" under the
very nose of the old horse. Once they passed a small farm where a
mother, neatly dressed, was standing at the gate, and a girl of fourteen
ran out to meet a man with her baby brother in her arms, who stretched
out his hands as the girl said:

"Yes, there's daddy! Go to daddy; welcome, daddy!"

Ah! how often had Joyce watched for her father at the gate! How her
heart had thrilled with joy as she ran to meet him; and now!

A low cry escaped her, which made Thomas turn his head, which he had
hitherto kept steadily to the front, as if everything depended on his
staring straight between the ears of the horse, and never looking to the
right hand, or the left.

Thomas was a hard featured man, who had served the old squire, and to
whom Mr. Falconer was still "Master Arthur." "Doan't ee fret, my dear
Miss Joyce. It's the hand of the Almighty."

Ah, _was_ it the hand of Almighty Love, the God that had so lately
revealed Himself to her in Christ, the All-loving as well as the
All-mighty--was it possible He could take away 'the master from her head
that day'?

The old servant's voice quavering with sympathy made Joyce feel that she
was also trembling on the brink of tears.

"Thomas, I want to be brave, for I shall have to comfort him and
mother."

Then there was silence again. The even jog trot of the horse's heavy
hoofs kept up a continuous rhythm:

"Home, home again; home, home again--this seemed the burden of the
strain--home, home again, but the same home never, never again."

The evening shadows were lying across the turf where the daisies had
closed their golden eyes for the night, when the gig turned into the
familiar road and drew up at the door.

The door was op