nce spark or flash of genius to aid him before this trial;
he mourned his own simple brains, so weak to aid him in this vital pass.
But of all living men the accidental discovery was most safe with him.
His heart went out to the secret mother, and he told himself that he
would guard her mystery like gold.

It was strange in a nature so timorous that not once did a suspicion he
had erred overtake him, and presently he wondered to observe how ancient
this discovery of the motherhood of Chris had grown within his mind. It
appeared as venerable as his own love for her. He yearned for power to
aid; without conscious direction of his course he proceeded and strode
along for hours. Then he ate a meal of bread and cheese at an inn and
tramped forward once more upon a winding road towards the village of
Zeal.

Through his uncertainty, athwart the deep perplexity of his mind, moved
hope and a shadowed joy. Within him arose again the vision of happiness
once pictured and prayed for, once revived, never quite banished to the
grey limbo of ambitions beyond fulfilment. Now realities saddened the
thought of it and brought ambition within a new environment less
splendid than the old. But, despite clouds, hope shone fairly forth at
last. So a planet, that the eye has followed at twilight and then lost a
while, beams anew at dawn after lapse of days, and wheels in wide mazes
upon some new background of the unchanging stars.

Elsewhere Mr. Lyddon braced himself to a painful duty, and had private
speech with his son-in-law. Like a thunderbolt the circling suspicions
fell on Will, and for a moment smothered his customary characteristics
under sheer surprise.

The miller spoke nervously, and walked up and down with his eyes
averted.

"Ban't no gert matter, I hope, an' I won't keep 'e from your work five
minutes. You've awnly got to say 'No,' an' theer's an end of it so far
as I'm concerned. 'Tis this: have 'e noticed heads close together now
an' again when you passed by of late?"

"Not me. Tu much business on my hands, I assure 'e. Coourse theer's
envious whisperings; allus is when a man gets a high place, same as what
I have, thanks to his awn gude sense an' the wisdom of others as knaws
what he's made of. But you trusted me wi' all your heart, an' you'll
never live to mourn it."

"I never want to. You'm grawing to be much to me by slow stages. Yet
these here tales. This child Timothy. Who's his faither, Will, an' who's
his mother?