Thus he grew, and when he was eight years old, his first friend and ally—­his grandmother—­died.  Mr. Churchouse, who had long deplored her influence for Abel’s sake, was hopeful that this departure might prove a blessing.

Now Sabina had taken her mother’s place and she looked after Ernest well enough.  He always hoped that she would marry, and she had been asked to do so more than once, but felt tempted to no such step.

Thus, then, things stood, and any change of focus and altered outlook in these people, that may serve to suggest discontinuity with their past, must be explained by the passage of ten years.  Such a period had renewed all physically—­a fact full of subtle connotations.  It had sharpened the youthful and matured the adult mind; it had dimmed the senses sinking upon nature’s night time and strengthened the dawning will and opening intellect.  For as a ship furls her spread of sail on entering harbour, so age reduces the scope of the mind and its energies to catch every fresh ripple of the breeze that blows out of progress and change.  The centre of the stage, too, gradually reveals new performers; the gaze of manhood is turned on new figures; the limelight of human interest throws up the coming forces of activity and intellect; while those who yesterday shone supreme, slowly pass into the penumbra that heralds eclipse.  And who bulk big enough to arrest the eternal march, delay their own progress from light to darkness, or stay the eager young feet tramping outward of the dayspring to take their places in the day?  Life moves so fast that many a man lives to see the dust thick on his own name in the scroll of merit and taste a regret that only reason can allay.

Fate had denied Sabina Dinnett her brief apotheosis.  From dark to dark she had gone; yet time had purged her mind of any large bitterness.  She looked on and watched Raymond’s sojourn in the light from a standpoint negative and indifferent.  The future for her held interest, for she could not cease to be interested in him, though she knew that he had long since ceased to be interested in her.  From the cool cloisters of her obscurity she watched and was only strong in opinion at one point.  She dreamed of her son making his way and succeeding in the world; she welcomed Mr. Churchouse’s assurance as to the lad’s mental progress and promise; but she was determined as ever that not, if she could help it, should Abel enter terms of friendship with his father.

Thus the relations subsisted, while, strange to record, in practice they had long been accepted as part of the order of things at Bridetown.  They ceased even to form matter for gossip.  For Raymond Ironsyde was greater here than the lord of the manor, or any other force.  The Mill continued to be the heart of the village.  Through the Mill the lifeblood circulated; by the Mill the prosperity of the people was regulated; and since the master saw that on his own prosperity reposed the prosperity of those whom he employed, there was none to decry him, or echo a disordered past in the ear of the well-ordered present.