one.

As for the tailor himself, he had also submitted--at least
partially--to his daughter's passive government. A day or two after
Ralph Ray's departure, Rotha had gone in search of her father, and had
brought him back with her. She had given him his work to do, and had
tried to interest him in his occupations. But a sense of dependence
seemed to cling to him, and at times he had the look of some wild
creature of the hills which had been captured indeed, but was watching
his opportunity of escape.

Sim rose at daybreak, and, wet or dry, he first went up on to the
hills. In an hour or two he was back again. Rotha understood his
purpose, but no word of explanation passed between them. She looked
into his face inquiringly day' after day, but nothing she saw there
gave hint of hope. The mare was lost. She would never be recovered.

Sometimes a fit of peculiar despondency would come upon Sim. At such
times he would go off without warning, and be seen no more for days.
Rotha knew that he had gone to his old haunts on the hill, for nothing
induced him to return to his cottage at Fornside. No one went in
pursuit of him. In a day or two he would come back and take up his
occupation as if he had never been away. Walking leisurely into the
court-yard, he would lift a besom and sweep, or step into the stable
and set to work at stitching up a rent in the old harness.

Willy Ray can hardly be said to have avoided Sim; he ignored him.
There was a more potent relation between these two than any of which
Willy had an idea. Satisfied as he had professed himself to be that
Sim was an innocent man, he was nevertheless unable to shake off an
uneasy sentiment of repulsion experienced in his presence. He
struggled to hold this in check, for Rotha's sake. But there was only
one way in which to avoid the palpable manifestation of his distrust,
and that was to conduct himself in such a manner as to appear
unconscious of Sim's presence in the house.

"The girl is not to blame," he said to himself again and again. "Rotha
is innocent, whoever may be guilty."

He put the case to himself so frequently in this way, he tried so hard
to explain to his own mind that Rotha at least was free of all taint,
that the very effort made him conscious of a latent suspicion
respecting Sim.

As to Sim's bearing towards Willy, it was the same as he had adopted
towards almost the whole of the little world in which he lived; he
took up the position of the g