She looked at him earnestly.  Her face paled and her eyes grew dark and wondering.

“Have I done anything wrong?” she asked.

“You?  No!  Not you!  You are not to blame, child!  But you’ve heard the law set out in church on Sundays that ’The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children even unto the third and fourth generation.’  You’ve heard that?”

“Yes, Dad!”

“Ay!—­and who dare say the fourth generation are to blame!  Yet, though they are guiltless, they suffer most!  No just God ever made such a law, though they say ’tis God speaking. I say ’tis the devil!”

His voice grew harsh and loud, and finding his stick near his chair, he took hold of it and struck it against the ground to emphasise his words.

“I say ’tis the devil!”

The girl rose from her kneeling attitude and put her arms gently round his shoulders.

“There, Dad!” she said soothingly,—­“Don’t worry!  Church and church things seem to rub you up all the wrong way!  Don’t think about them!  Supper will be ready in a little while and after supper we’ll have a long talk.  And then you’ll tell me what the doctor said.”

His angry excitement subsided suddenly and his head sank on his breast.

“Ay!  After supper.  Then—­then I’ll tell you what the doctor said.”

His speech faltered.  He turned and looked out on the garden, full of luxuriant blossom, the colours of which were gradually merging into indistinguishable masses under the darkening grey of the dusk.

She moved softly about the room, setting things straight, and lighting two candles in a pair of tall brass candlesticks which stood one on either side of a carved oak press.  The room thus illumined showed itself to be a roughly-timbered apartment in the style of the earliest Tudor times, and all the furniture in it was of the same period.  The thick gate-legged table—­the curious chairs, picturesque, but uncomfortable—­the two old dower chests—­ the quaint three-legged stools and upright settles, were a collection that would have been precious to the art dealer and curio hunter, as would the massive eight-day clock with its grotesquely painted face, delineating not only the hours and days but the lunar months, and possessing a sonorous chime which just now struck eight with a boom as deep as that of a cathedral bell.  The sound appeared to startle the old farmer with a kind of shock, for he rose from his chair and grasped his stick, looking about him as though for the moment uncertain of his bearings.

“How fast the hours go by!” he muttered, dreamily.  “When we’re young they don’t count—­but when we’re old we know that every hour brings us nearer to the end-the end, the end of all!  Another night closing in—­and the last load cleared from the field—­Innocent!”

The name broke from his lips like a cry of suffering, and she ran to him trembling.

“Dad, dear, what is it?”