Ishmael lay in silence.  He knew—­no one with eyes to see could live there and not know—­but, like Killigrew, he had always tried not to think too much about it.  He was so unable to take things superficially that he feared thought, and hence often did less than men who did not care as much.  He gave a slight movement now that was not so much impatience as a thrusting away of a thing that sickened him and which he felt he could not stem.  It seemed to him that the glory of the day had departed.  He, too, remembered that shambles of which the Parson spoke; it had been the first time the pain in the world he so loved had come home to him.  He remembered now how, as he and the Parson had come back, in melancholy silence, from that scene of blood, his own declarations about its being such a good world, made to the Parson on his first night home and repeated so often since to his own high-beating heart, had mocked at him.  What did it avail being happy when there was such pain in the world?  Himself or another, or, worse still, these innocents that could not philosophise about it—­that any should suffer made all happiness futile.  The same deadly consciousness came upon him now on the sunny cliff, and he resented that the topic should have been started, himself keeping a sullen silence.  But the Parson turned and spoke directly to him.

“By the way,” he said, “I hate to have to tell you, but I hear, and I’m afraid it’s true, that Archelaus is starting bush-beating on the estate again.  I met John-Willy Jacka coming back from the direction of the wood late one night with a suspicious-looking sack and a bludgeon, and next day I asked John-James if he knew anything.  He didn’t give anyone away, but I gathered—­”

“If it’s true—­” Ishmael paused for sheer rage, then went on:  “I’ll tackle John-Willy, and if it’s true he can go.  But of course it’s Archelaus really, just because he knows how I feel about it.  It isn’t even as though it were the season for it, if you can talk of a season for such a thing, but no one can be very hard up for food as late as this.  Oh, if I can’t be free of him even now he’s working at Botallack—­”

“I had such a quarrel with Mamma about that this morning,” struck in Vassie, who disliked the conversation and thought she had been out of it long enough.  “She was boasting at breakfast—­after you’d gone out, Ishmael—­that Archelaus was a captain now, and I laughed, and said it was more than he’d ever been in the army, but that of course a mine captain wasn’t a real one ... and she was furious.  She said it was quite real enough for her and Archelaus anyway, though perhaps not for the likes of me.  I met Archelaus at the mill the other day when I was over seeing Phoebe, and he certainly did seem smart, ever so different from when he came back.  You wouldn’t have known him.”