d never
realized that it would be now. Why had he not given her time to think?
If Ralph knew what she had done!

For an hour or two Rotha went about the house with a look of
bewilderment in her eyes.

Willy came back soon afterwards, and helped her to wheel his mother in
her chair to her place by the hearth. He had regained his wonted
composure, and spoke to her as if nothing unusual had occurred.
Perhaps it had been something like a dream, all this that haunted her.
Willy was speaking cheerfully enough. Just then her father came into
the kitchen, and slunk away silently to a seat in the remotest corner
of the wide ingle. Willy went out almost immediately. Everything was
in a maze. Could it be that she had seemed to say No?

Rotha was rudely awakened from her trance by the entrance at this
moment of the parson of the chapel on the Raise. The present was the
first visit the Reverend Nicholas Stevens had paid since the day of
the funeral. He had heard of the latest disaster which had befallen
the family at the Moss. He had also learned something of the paralytic
seizure which the disaster had occasioned. He could not any longer put
away the solemn duty of visitation. To take the comfort of his
presence, to give the light of his countenance to the smitten, was a
part of his sacred function. These accidents were among the sore
trials incident to a cure of souls. The Reverend Nicholas had brushed
himself spick-and-span that morning, and, taking up his gold-headed
cane, had walked the two miles to Shoulthwaite.

Rotha was tying the ribbons of Mrs. Ray's white cap under her chin as
the vicar entered. She took up a chair for him, and placed it near the
invalid. But he did not sit immediately. His eye traversed the kitchen
at a glance. He saw Mrs. Ray propped up with her pillows, and looking
vacantly about her, but his attention seemed to be riveted on Sim, who
sat uneasily on the bench, apparently trying to escape the
concentrated gaze.

"What have we here?" he said in a cold and strident voice. "The man
Simeon Stagg? Is he here too?"

The moment before Rotha had gone into the dairy adjoining, and, coming
back, she was handing a bowl of milk to her father. Sim clutched at
the dish with nervous fingers.

The Reverend Nicholas walked with measured paces towards where he sat.
Then he paused, and stood a yard or two behind Sim, whose eyes were
still averted.

"I was told you had made your habitation on the hillside; a fi