for! And there's nothing else to do."

"You're inventing the mystery," Rupert said. "If Notya and our absent
parent didn't get on together--and who could get on with a man who's
always ill?--they were wise in parting, weren't they?"

"But why the moor?"

"Ah, I think that was a sudden impulse, and she has always been too
proud to own that it was a mistake."

"That's the first sensible thing any one has said yet," John remarked.
"I quite agree with you. It's my own idea."

"I'm a young man of penetration, as I've told you all before."

"And shoved into a bank!" John grumbled.

"I like the bank. It's a cheerful place. There's lots of gold about, and
people come and talk to me through the bars."

"But," Helen began, on the deep notes of her voice, "what should we have
done if she had repented and taken us away? What should we have done?"

"We might have been happy," Miriam said.

"John, what would you have done?" Helen persisted.

"Said nothing, grown up as fast as I could, and come back."

"So should I."

Rupert chuckled. "You wouldn't, Helen. You'd have stayed with Notya and
Miriam and me and looked after us all, and longed for this place and
denied yourself."

"And made us all uncomfortable." Miriam pointed at Helen's grey dress.
"What have you been doing?"

Helen looked down at the dark marks where her knees had pressed the
ground.

"It will dry," she said, and went nearer the fire. "Zebedee says old
Halkett's ill."

"Drink and the devil," Rupert hummed. "He'll die soon."

"Hope so," John said fervently. "I don't like to think of the bloated
old beast alive."

"He'll be horrider dead, I think," said Helen. "Dead things should be
beautiful."

"Well, he won't be. Moreover, nothing is, for long. You've seen sheep's
carcasses after the snows. Don't be romantic."

"I said they should be."

"It's a good thing they're not. They wouldn't fertilize the ground.
Can't we have supper?"

"Here's Notya!" Miriam uttered the warning, and began to poke the fire.

The room was entered by a small lady who carried her head well. She had
fair, curling hair, serious blue eyes and a mouth which had been
puckered into a kind of sternness.

"So you have come back, Helen," she said. "You should have told me. I
have been to the road to look for you. You are very late."

"Yes. I'm sorry. I met Dr. Mackenzie."

"He ought to have brought you home."

"He wanted to. I got turbot for Uncle Alfred. It's on the kitc