?'

'Yes, I think they are, sometimes,' said Joshua.

'No. It will out. We shall tell.'

'What, and ruin her--kill her? Disgrace her children, and pull down the
whole auspicious house of Fellmer about our ears? No! May I--drown
where he was drowned before I do it! Never, never. Surely you can say
the same, Cornelius!'

Cornelius seemed fortified, and no more was said. For a long time after
that day he did not see Joshua, and before the next year was out a son
and heir was born to the Fellmers. The villagers rang the three bells
every evening for a week and more, and were made merry by Mr. Fellmer's
ale; and when the christening came on Joshua paid Narrobourne another
visit.

Among all the people who assembled on that day the brother clergymen were
the least interested. Their minds were haunted by a spirit in kerseymere
in the evening they walked together in the fields.

'She's all right,' said Joshua. 'But here are you doing journey-work,
Cornelius, and likely to continue at it till the end of the day, as far
as I can see. I, too, with my petty living--what am I after all? . . .
To tell the truth, the Church is a poor forlorn hope for people without
influence, particularly when their enthusiasm begins to flag. A social
regenerator has a better chance outside, where he is unhampered by dogma
and tradition. As for me, I would rather have gone on mending mills,
with my crust of bread and liberty.'

Almost automatically they had bent their steps along the margin of the
river; they now paused. They were standing on the brink of the
well-known weir. There were the hatches, there was the culvert; they
could see the pebbly bed of the stream through the pellucid water. The
notes of the church-bells were audible, still jangled by the enthusiastic
villagers.

'Why see--it was there I hid his walking-stick!' said Joshua, looking
towards the sedge. The next moment, during a passing breeze, something
flashed white on the spot to which the attention of Cornelius was drawn.

From the sedge rose a straight little silver-poplar, and it was the
leaves of this sapling which caused the flicker of whiteness.

'His walking-stick has grown!' Joshua added. 'It was a rough one--cut
from the hedge, I remember.'

At every puff of wind the tree turned white, till they could not bear to
look at it; and they walked away.

'I see him every night,' Cornelius murmured . . . 'Ah, we read our
_Hebrews_ to little account,