es. The money was hers, not his; and it was
too late now for him to make up the heavy loss. The blow which had
deprived him of the fruits of his labor seemed to have incapacitated him
for further work.

Moreover, Phebe was away oftener than usual: gone to the house of the
spoiler. Nor did she come home, as she had been wont to do, with radiant
eyes, and a soft, sweet smile coming and going, and many a pleasant
piece of news to tell off on her nimble fingers. She returned with
tear-stained eyelids and a downcast air, and was often altogether silent
as to the result of the day's absence.

He strove, notwithstanding a haunting dread of failure, to resume his
old occupation. Doggedly every morning he put on his brown paper cap,
and went off to his crowded little workshop, but with unequal footsteps,
quite unlike his former firm tread. But it would not do. He stood for
hours before his half-shaped blocks of oak, with birds and leaves and
heads partly traced upon them; but he found himself powerless to
complete his own designs. Between him and them stood the image of Phebe,
a poverty-stricken, work-worn woman, toiling with her hands, in all
weathers, upon their three or four barren fields, which were now the
only property left to him. It had been pleasant to him to see her milk
the cows, and help him to fetch in the sheep from the moors; but until
now he had been able to pay for the rougher work on the farmstead. His
neighbor, Samuel Nixey, had let his laborers do it for him, since he had
kept his own hands and time for his artistic pursuit. But he could
afford this no longer, and the thought of the next winter's work which
lay before him and Phebe harassed him terribly.

"Father," she said to him one evening, after she had been at
Riversborough, "they are all going away--Mrs. Sefton, and Madame, and
the children. They are going Scarborough, and after that to London,
never to come back. I shall not see them again."

"Thank God!" thought the dumb old man, and his eyes gleamed brightly
from under their thick gray eyebrows. But he did not utter the words, so
much less easy was it for his fingers to betray his thoughts than it
would have been for his lips. And Phebe did not guess them.

"Is there any news of him?" he asked.

"Not a word," she answered. "Mr. Clifford has almost given it up. He is
an unforgiving man, an awful man."

"No, no; he is a just man," said old Marlowe; "he wants nothing but his
own again, like me,