“Pictures and books,” she muttered.  “What has a minister of the gospel to do with these?  Douglas Guest had chosen his path in life.”

“Nay,” Cicely interrupted eagerly.  “It was chosen for him.  He was young, and Father was very stern and obstinate, as who should know better than ourselves, Joan?  Douglas never seemed happy after he came back from college.  His life was not suitable for him.”

Joan was slowly getting angry.

“Not suitable for him?” she retorted.  “What folly!  Who was he, to pick and choose?  It was rare fortune for him that father should have brought him up as he did.  You’ll say next that I was forced on him, that he didna ask me to be his wife—­ay, and stand hand in hand with me before all of them.  You’ve forgotten it, maybe.”

But Cicely, to whom that day had been one of agony, marked with a black stone, never to be forgotten, shook her head with a little shudder.

“I’m sure I never hinted at it, Joan,” she said; “but for all you can say, I believe he’s dead.”

“Maybe,” Joan answered coldly, “but I’m not yet believing it.  It’s led astray I believe he was, and heavy’s the penalty he’ll have to pay.  It’s my notion he’s alive in this city, and that’s why I’m here.  It’ll be a day of reckoning when we meet him, but it’ll come, Cicely.  I’ve dreamed of it, and it’ll come.  I’ll never bend the knee at Meeting till I’ve found him.”

Cicely shuddered.

“It’ll never bring poor Father back to life,” she murmured.  “You’d best go back to Feldwick, Joan.  There’s the farm—­you and Reuben Smith could work it well enough.  Folks there will think you’re out of your mind staying on here in London.”

“Folks may think what they will,” she answered savagely.  “I’ll not go back till Douglas Guest hangs.”

“Then may you never see Feldwick again,” Cicely prayed.

“You’re but a poor creature yourself,” Joan cried, turning upon her with a sudden passion.  “You would have him go unpunished then, robber, murderer, deceiver.  Oh, don’t think that I never saw what was in your mind.  I know very well what brings you here now.  You want to save him.  I saw it all many a time at Feldwick, but you’ve none so much to flatter yourself about.  He took little enough notice of me, and none at all of you.  He deceived us all, and as I’m a living woman he shall suffer for it.”

Cicely rose up with pale face.

“Joan,” she said, “you are talking of the dead.”

But Joan only scoffed.  She was a woman whose beliefs once allowed to take root in the mind were unassailable, proof against probability, proof against argument.  Douglas Guest was alive, and it was her mission to bid him stand forth before the world.  She was the avenger—­she believed in herself.  The spirit of the prophetess was in her veins.  She grew more tolerant towards her younger sister.  After all she was of weaker mould.  How should she see what had come even to her only as an inspiration?