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?”

“How the flaming hell should I knaw?  I found him same as you finds a berry on a briar.  That’s auld history, surely?”

“The child graws so ’mazing like you, that even dim eyes such as mine can see it.”

A sudden flash of light came into Blanchard’s face.  Then the fire died as quickly as it had been kindled, and he grew calm.

“God A’mighty!” he said, in a voice hushed and awed.  “They think that!  I lay that’s why your darter’s cried o’ nights, then, an’ Chris have grawed sad an’ wisht in her ways, an’ mother have pet the bwoy wan moment an’ been short wi’ un the next.”

He remained marvellously quiet under this attack, but amazement chiefly marked his attitude.  Miller Lyddon, encouraged by this unexpected reasonableness, spoke again more sternly.

“The thing looks bad to a wife an’ mother, an’ ’tis my duty to ax ’e for a plain, straightforward answer ’pon it.  Human nature’s got a ugly trick of repeatin’ itself in this matter, as we all knaws.  But I’ll say nought an’ think nought till you answers me.  Be the bwoy yourn or not?  Tell me true, with your hand on this.”

He took his Bible from the mantelpiece, while Will, apparently cowed by the gravity of the situation, placed both palms upon it, then fixed his eyes solemnly upon Mr. Lyddon.

“As God in heaven’s my judge, he ban’t no cheel of mine, and I knaw nothing about him—­no, nor yet his faither nor mother nor plaace of birth.  I found un wheer I said, and if I’ve lied by a fraction, may God choke me as I stand here afore you.”

“An’ I believe you to the bottom!” declared his father-in-law.  “I believe you as I hopes to be believed myself, when I stands afore the Open Books an’ says I’ve tried to do my duty.  You’ve got me on your side, an’ that’s to say you’ll have Phoebe an’ your mother, tu, for certain.”

Then Blanchard’s mood changed, and there came a tremendous rebound from the tension of the last few minutes.  In the anti-climax following upon his oath, passion, chained a while by astonishment, broke loose in a whirlwind.