In the following week Robin went home again.

The clear weather of Easter had broken, and racing clouds, thick as a pall, sped across the sky that had been so blue and so cheerful; a wind screamed all day, now high, now low, shattering the tender flowers of spring, ruffling the Derwent against its current, by which he rode, and dashing spatters of rain now and again on his back, tossing high and wide the branches under which he went, until the woods themselves became as a great melancholy organ, making sad music about him.

When a mind is fluent and uncertain there is no describing it.  He thought he had come to a decision last week; he found that the decision was shattered as soon as made.  He had talked to the priest; he had resisted Marjorie; and yet to neither of them had he put into formal words what it was that troubled him.  He had asked questions about vocation, about the place that circumstance occupies in it, of the value of dispositions, fears, scruples, and resistance.  He had, that is, fingered his wound, half uncovered it, and then covered it up again, tormented it, glanced at it and then glanced aside; yet the one thing he had not done was to probe it—­not even to allow another to do so.

His mind, then, was fluent and distracted; it formed images before him, which dissolved as soon as formed; it whirled in little eddies; it threw up obscuring foam; it ran clear one instant, and the next broke itself in rapids.  He could neither ease it, nor dam it altogether, and he did not know what to do.

As he rode through Froggatt, he saw a group of saddle-horses standing at the inn door, but thought nothing of it, till a man ran out of the door, still holding his pot, and saluted him, and he recognised him to be one of Mr. Babington’s men.

“My master is within, sir,” he said; “he bade me look out for you.”

Robin drew rein, and as he did so, Anthony, too, came out.

“Ah!” he said.  “I heard you would be coming this way.  Will you come in?  I have something to say to you.”

Robin slipped off, leaving his mare in the hands of Anthony’s man, since he himself was riding alone, with his valise strapped on behind.

It was a little room, very trim and well kept, on the first floor, to which his friend led him.  Anthony shut the door carefully and came across to the settle by the window-seat.

“Well,” he said, “I have bad news for you, my friend.  Will you forgive me?  I have seen your father and had words with him.”

“Eh?”

“I said nothing to you before,” went on the other, sitting down beside him.  “I knew you would not have it so, but I went to see for myself and to put a question or two.  He is your father, but he has also been my friend.  That gives me rights, you see!”

“Tell me,” said Robin heavily.