im. He remembered now how, as he and the Parson had come back,
in melancholy silence, from that scene of blood, his own declarations
about its being such a good world, made to the Parson on his first night
home and repeated so often since to his own high-beating heart, had
mocked at him. What did it avail being happy when there was such pain in
the world? Himself or another, or, worse still, these innocents that
could not philosophise about it--that any should suffer made all
happiness futile. The same deadly consciousness came upon him now on the
sunny cliff, and he resented that the topic should have been started,
himself keeping a sullen silence. But the Parson turned and spoke
directly to him.

"By the way," he said, "I hate to have to tell you, but I hear, and I'm
afraid it's true, that Archelaus is starting bush-beating on the estate
again. I met John-Willy Jacka coming back from the direction of the wood
late one night with a suspicious-looking sack and a bludgeon, and next
day I asked John-James if he knew anything. He didn't give anyone away,
but I gathered--"

"If it's true--" Ishmael paused for sheer rage, then went on: "I'll
tackle John-Willy, and if it's true he can go. But of course it's
Archelaus really, just because he knows how I feel about it. It isn't
even as though it were the season for it, if you can talk of a season
for such a thing, but no one can be very hard up for food as late as
this. Oh, if I can't be free of him even now he's working at
Botallack--"

"I had such a quarrel with Mamma about that this morning," struck in
Vassie, who disliked the conversation and thought she had been out of it
long enough. "She was boasting at breakfast--after you'd gone out,
Ishmael--that Archelaus was a captain now, and I laughed, and said it
was more than he'd ever been in the army, but that of course a mine
captain wasn't a real one ... and she was furious. She said it was quite
real enough for her and Archelaus anyway, though perhaps not for the
likes of me. I met Archelaus at the mill the other day when I was over
seeing Phoebe, and he certainly did seem smart, ever so different
from when he came back. You wouldn't have known him."

She ended on her high laugh and rolled over a little woolly puppy that
lay in her lap, burying her long fingers in its coat. She was perched
upon a grassy slope like some vast moth that had alighted there, her
pale skirts spread, a white cashmere shawl swathed about her sh