ude on your secrets Miss Colebrook."

With that acrid answer, our priestess took herself and her Prayer-book
out of the kitchen. I joined Naomi, entering the room by the garden
door. She met me eagerly. "I am not quite easy about something," she
said. "Did you tell me that you left Ambrose and Silas together?"

"Yes."

"Suppose Silas tells Ambrose of what happened this morning?"

The same idea, as I have already mentioned, had occurred to my mind. I
did my best to reassure Naomi.

"Mr. Jago is out of the way," I replied. "You and I can easily put
things right in his absence."

She took my arm.

"Come in to prayers," she said. "Ambrose will be there, and I shall
find an opportunity of speaking to him."

Neither Ambrose nor Silas was in the breakfast-room when we entered it.
After waiting vainly for ten minutes, Mr. Meadowcroft told his daughter
to read the prayers. Miss Meadowcroft read, thereupon, in the tone of
an injured woman taking the throne of mercy by storm, and insisting on
her rights. Breakfast followed; and still the brothers were absent.
Miss Meadowcroft looked at her father, and said, "From bad to worse,
sir. What did I tell you?" Naomi instantly applied the antidote: "The
boys are no doubt detained over their work, uncle." She turned to me.
"You want to see the farm, Mr. Lefrank. Come and help me to find the
boys."

For more than an hour we visited one part of the farm after another,
without discovering the missing men. We found them at last near the
outskirts of a small wood, sitting, talking together, on the trunk of a
felled tree.

Silas rose as we approached, and walked away, without a word of
greeting or apology, into the wood. As he got on his feet, I noticed
that his brother whispered something in his ear; and I heard him
answer, "All right."

"Ambrose, does that mean you have something to keep a secret from us?"
asked Naomi, approaching her lover with a smile. "Is Silas ordered to
hold his tongue?"

Ambrose kicked sulkily at the loose stones lying about him. I noticed,
with a certain surprise that his favorite stick was not in his hand,
and was not lying near him.

"Business," he said in answer to Naomi, not very graciously--"business
between Silas and me. That's what it means, if you must know."

Naomi went on, woman-like, with her questioning, heedless of the
reception which they might meet with from an irritated man.

"Why were you both away at prayers and breakfast-time?" she