eyes and mouth were buried in her loose-clustering tresses.  Before, however, he could say another word he was interrupted.  A sheep, feeding above them, alarmed by a stranger’s approach, rushed down past them; and hastily recovering himself, Robert looked up.  There was nobody, but he saw that they were near his house, and that his father, who had just come to the window, was looking down straight upon them.  Miss Shipton immediately said that it was late, rose, and walked homewards; and Robert alone went up the cliff.  Michael had seen the girl walk away and had recognised her, but he had not seen what had preceded her departure.  Instantly, however, he penetrated the secret, and his first words when Robert presented himself were—­

“Why, Robert, that was Miss Shipton.”

“Yes, father.”

“What were she and you doing here?”

“We happened to meet.”

There was something in the tone in which Robert replied which showed the father at once that his son’s confidence in him was not illimitable, as he had believed it to be hitherto.  It is a heart-breaking time for father and mother when they first become aware that the deepest secrets in their children are intrusted not to them, but to others.  Michael felt repelled and was silent; but after a while, as they both were leaning over the garden-wall and gazing upon the water, he said—­

“Mere worldlings, those Shiptons, Robert!”

“I do not know much about them, but they seem an honest, good sort of people.”

“Ah! yes, my son; they may be all that.  But what is it?  They are not the Lord’s.”

Robert made no reply, and presently father and son left the house and went back to Perran to their work, uncommunicative.

It was a peculiar misfortune for a man of Michael’s temperament that he had nobody save his son who could assist him in the shaping of his resolves or in the correction of his conclusions.  Brought up in a narrow sect, self-centred, moody, he needed continually that wholesome twist to another point of the compass which intercourse with equals gives.  He was continually prone to subjection under the rigorous domination of a single thought, from which he deduced inference after inference, ending in absurdity, which would have been dissipated in an instant by discussion.  We complain of people because they are not original, but we do not ask what their originality, if they had any, would be worth.  Better a thousand times than the originality of most of us is the average common-sense which is not our own exclusively, but shared with millions of our fellow-beings, and is not due to any one of them.  Michael ought to have talked over the events of the morning with his wife; but alas! his wife’s counsel was never sought, and not worth having.  He did seek counsel at the throne of heavenly grace that night, but the answer given by the oracle was framed by himself.  He was in sore straits.  Something seemed to have interposed itself between him and Robert, and when, instead of the old unveiled frankness, Robert was reticent and even suspicious, Michael’s heart almost broke, and he went up to his room, and shutting the door, wept bitter tears.  His sorrow clothed itself, even at its uttermost, with no words of his own, but always in those of the Book.