It was between the breakfast and dinner hours, at the farm, next day, when the young squire, accompanied by Anthony Hackbut, met farmer Fleming in the lane bordering one of the outermost fields of wheat.  Anthony gave little more than a blunt nod to his relative, and slouched on, leaving the farmer in amazement, while the young squire stopped him to speak with him.  Anthony made his way on to the house.  Shortly after, he was seen passing through the gates of the garden, accompanied by Rhoda.  At the dinner-hour, Robert was taken aside by the farmer.  Neither Rhoda nor Anthony presented themselves.  They did not appear till nightfall.  When Anthony came into the room, he took no greetings and gave none.  He sat down on the first chair by the door, shaking his head, with vacant eyes.  Rhoda took off her bonnet, and sat as strangely silent.  In vain Mrs. Sumfit asked her; “Shall it be tea, dear, and a little cold meat?” The two dumb figures were separately interrogated, but they had no answer.

“Come! brother Tony?” the farmer tried to rally him.

Dahlia was knitting some article of feminine gear.  Robert stood by the musk-pots at the window, looking at Rhoda fixedly.  Of this gaze she became conscious, and glanced from him to the clock.

“It’s late,” she said, rising.

“But you’re empty, my dear.  And to think o’ going to bed without a dinner, or your tea, and no supper!  You’ll never say prayers, if you do,” said Mrs. Sumfit.

The remark engendered a notion in the farmer’s head, that Anthony promised to be particularly prayerless.

“You’ve been and spent a night at the young squire’s, I hear, brother Tony.  All right and well.  No complaints on my part, I do assure ye.  If you’re mixed up with that family, I won’t bring it in you’re anyways mixed up with this family; not so as to clash, do you see.  Only, man, now you are here, a word’d be civil, if you don’t want a doctor.”

“I was right,” murmured Mrs. Sumfit.  “At the funeral, he was; and Lord be thanked!  I thought my eyes was failin’.  Mas’ Gammon, you’d ha’ lost no character by sidin’ wi’ me.”

“Here’s Dahlia, too,” said the farmer.  “Brother Tony, don’t you see her?  She’s beginning to be recognizable, if her hair’d grow a bit faster.  She’s...well, there she is.”

A quavering, tiny voice, that came from Anthony, said:  “How d’ ye do—­how d’ ye do;” sounding like the first effort of a fife.  But Anthony did not cast eye on Dahlia.

“Will you eat, man?—­will you smoke a pipe?—­won’t you talk a word?—­will you go to bed?”

These several questions, coming between pauses, elicited nothing from the staring oldman.

“Is there a matter wrong at the Bank?” the farmer called out, and Anthony jumped in a heap.

“Eh?” persisted the farmer.

Rhoda interposed:  “Uncle is tired; he is unwell.  Tomorrow he will talk to you.”