The farmer replied:  “Mother, let’s have no woman’s nonsense.  What we’ve got to bear, let us bear.  And you go on your knees to the Lord, and don’t be a heathen woman, I say.  Get up.  There’s a Bible in your bedroom.  Find you out comfort in that.”

“No, William, no!” she sobbed, still kneeling:  “there ain’t a dose o’ comfort there when poor souls is in the dark, and haven’t got patience for passages.  And me and my Bible!—­how can I read it, and not know my ailing, and a’stract one good word, William?  It’ll seem only the devil’s shootin’ black lightnings across the page, as poor blessed granny used to say, and she believed witches could do it to you in her time, when they was evil-minded.  No!  To-night I look on the binding of the Holy Book, and I don’t, and I won’t, I sha’ n’t open it.”

This violent end to her petition was wrought by the farmer grasping her arm to bring her to her feet.

“Go to bed, mother.”

“I shan’t open it,” she repeated, defiantly.  “And it ain’t,” she gathered up her comfortable fat person to assist the words “it ain’t good—­no, not the best pious ones—­I shall, and will say it! as is al’ays ready to smack your face with the Bible.”

“Now, don’t ye be angry,” said the farmer.

She softened instantly.

“William, dear, I got fifty-seven pounds sterling, and odd shillings, in a Savings-bank, and that I meant to go to Dahly, and not to yond’ dark thing sitting there so sullen, and me in my misery; I’d give it to you now for news of my darlin’.  Yes, William; and my poor husband’s cottage, in Sussex—­seventeen pound per annum.  That, if you’ll be goodness itself, and let me hear a word.”

“Take her upstairs,” said the farmer to Rhoda, and Rhoda went by her and took her hands, and by dint of pushing from behind and dragging in front, Mrs. Sumfit, as near on a shriek as one so fat and sleek could be, was ejected.  The farmer and Robert heard her struggles and exclamations along the passage, but her resistance subsided very suddenly.

“There’s power in that girl,” said the farmer, standing by the shut door.

Robert thought so, too.  It affected his imagination, and his heart began to beat sickeningly.

“Perhaps she promised to speak—­what has happened, whatever that may be,” he suggested.

“Not she; not she.  She respects my wishes.”

Robert did not ask what had happened.

Mr. Fleming remained by the door, and shut his mouth from a further word till he heard Rhoda’s returning footstep.  He closed the door again behind her, and went up to the square deal table, leaned his body forward on the knuckles of his trembling fist, and said, “We’re pretty well broken up, as it is.  I’ve lost my taste for life.”

There he paused.  Save by the shining of a wet forehead, his face betrayed nothing of the anguish he suffered.  He looked at neither of them, but sent his gaze straight away under labouring brows to an arm of the fireside chair, while his shoulders drooped on the wavering support of his hard-shut hands.  Rhoda’s eyes, ox-like, as were her father’s, smote full upon Robert’s, as in a pang of apprehension of what was about to be uttered.