Captain Monk looked at his daughter as if not understanding her.  “No, no, no,” he said.  “My child, you forget; trouble must be obscuring your faculties.  None but a legal descendant of the Monks could be allowed to have Leet Hall.  Besides, apart from this, it is already settled.  I have seen for some little time now how unjust it would be to supplant Henry Carradyne.”

“Is he to be your heir?  Is it so ordered?”

“Irrevocably.  I have told him so this morning.”

“What am I to do?” she wailed in bitter despair.  “Papa, what is to become of me—­and of my unoffending child?”

“I don’t know:  I wish I did know.  It will be a cruel blight upon us all.  You will have to live it down, Eliza.  Ah, child, if you and Katherine had only listened to me, and not made those rebellious marriages!”

He turned away as he spoke in the direction of the church, to see that his orders were being executed there.  Harry Carradyne ran after him.  The clock was striking midday as they entered the churchyard.

Yes, the workmen were at their work—­taking down the bells.

“If the time were to come over again, Harry,” began Captain Monk as they were walking homeward, he leaning upon his nephew’s arm, “I wouldn’t have them put up.  They don’t seem to have brought luck somehow, as the parish has been free to say.  Not but that must be utter nonsense.”

“Well, no they don’t, uncle,” assented Harry.

“As one grows in years, one gets to look at things differently, lad.  Actions that seemed laudable enough when one’s blood was young and hot, crop up again then, wearing another aspect.  But for those chimes, poor West would not have have died as he did.  I have had him upon my mind a good bit lately.”

Surely Captain Monk was wonderfully changing!  And he was leaning heavily upon Harry’s arm.

“Are you tired, uncle?  Would you like to sit down on this bench and rest?”

“No, I’m not tired.  It’s West I’m thinking about.  He lies on my mind sadly.  And I never did anything for the wife or child to atone to them!  It’s too late now—­and has been this many a year.”

Harry Carradyne’s heart began to beat a little.  Should he say what he had been hoping to say sometime?  He might never have a better opportunity than this.

“Uncle Godfrey,” he spoke in low tones, “would you—­would you like to see Mr. West’s daughter?  His wife has been dead a long while; but—­would you like to see her—­Alice?”

“Ay,” fervently spoke the old man.  “If she be in the land of the living, bring her to me.  I’ll tell her how sorry I am, and how I would undo the past if I could.  And I’ll ask her if she’ll be to me as a daughter.”

So then Harry Carradyne told him all.  It was Alice West who was already under his roof, and who, fate and fortune permitting, Heaven permitting, would sometime be Alice Carradyne.