Michael Trevanion loved his son with a father’s love, but with a mother’s too.  He rejoiced to talk with him as his father and friend, but there was in him also that wild, ferocious passion for his child which generally belongs to the woman, a passion which in its intense vitality forecasts, apprehends, and truly discerns danger where, to the mere intellect, there is nothing.  Michael wondered a little at Robert’s unusually frequent visits to his work over the hill, and as he was in the town one morning, he determined to cross the hill himself and see how the house was going on.  The mist, which had hung about for a week, had gradually rolled itself into masses as the sun rose higher.  It was no longer without form and void, but was detaching itself into huge fragments, which let in the sun and were gradually sucked up by him.  Rapidly everything became transformed, and lo! as if by enchantment, the whole sky resumed once more its deepest blue, the perfect semicircle of the horizon sharply revealed itself, and vessels five miles off were visible to their spars.  Michael reached the end of his journey and waited, looking out from one of the upper stories.  He saw nothing of the splendour of the scene before him.  He was restless, he did not quite know why.  He could not tell exactly why he was there, but nevertheless he determined to remain.  He generally carried a Bible in his pocket, and he turned where he had turned so often before, to the fifteenth chapter of Luke, and read the parable of the prodigal son.  He had affixed his own interpretation to that story, and he always held that the point of it was not the love of the father, but the magnificent repentance of the boy who could simply say, “I have sinned against Heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.”  No wonder the fatted calf was killed for him.  No excuses; a noble confession and a trust in his father’s affection for him!  His own Robert would never go wrong, but if he did, it would cost nothing to forgive him.  Then, as he often did, he fell on his knees, and, in front of the space where the window was to come, which would open on a little southern balcony looking over the sea, there, amid the lumps of plaster and shavings, he besought his Maker to preserve the child.  Michael was sincere in his prayers, nakedly sincere, and yet there were some things he kept to himself even when he was with his God.  He never mentioned his disappointment with his wife, never a word; but he assumed a right to the perfect enjoyment of Robert by way of compensation.  Calvinist as he was to the marrow, he would almost have impeached the Divine justice if Robert had been removed from him.

Robert, walking leisurely, turning to look behind him for the hundredth time, had spied Miss Shipton on her road to the town from her accustomed plunge.  He intercepted her by going round a meadow to the left at a great rate, and found himself face to face with her as she was about to pass the corner.  The third side of the meadow round which he had raced was an unfinished road, and was a way, though not the usual way, back to Perran.