e through the darkness and the distance. But he
was dead, and had been in his grave for many days already. Was she to
hear that lost, forlorn cry ringing in her ears forever? Oh, if she
could but have known something of him between that night, when he walked
beside her through the dark deserted roads, pouring out his whole
sorrowful soul to her, and the hour when in the darkness again he had
strayed from his path, and been swallowed up of death! Was it true that
he had gone down into that great gulf of secrecy and silence, without a
word of comfort spoken, or a ray of light shed upon its profound
mystery?

The cold wind blew in through the open door, and she shut it again,
going back to her low chair on the hearth. Through her blinding tears
she saw her father's brown hands stretched out to her, and the withered
fingers speaking eagerly.

"I shall be there before long," he said; "he will not have to wait very
long for me. And if you bid me I will forgive him at once. I cannot bear
to see your tears. Tell me: must I forgive him? I will do anything, if
you will look up at me again and smile."

It was a strange smile that gleamed through Phebe's tears, but she had
never heard an appeal like this from her dumb father without responding
to it.

"Must I forgive him?" he asked.

"'If ye forgive men their trespasses,'" she answered, "'your heavenly
Father will also forgive yours; but if ye forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive yours.' It was our
Lord Jesus Christ who said that, not your old Socrates, father."

"It is a hard saying," he replied.

"I don't think so," she said; "it was what Jesus Christ was doing every
day he lived."

From that time old Marlowe did not mention Roland Sefton again, or his
sin against him.

As the dark stormy days passed on he sometimes put a touch or two to the
outstretched wings of his swooping hawk, but it did not get on fast.
With a pathetic clinging to Phebe he seldom let her stay long out of his
sight, but followed her about like a child, or sat on the hearth
watching her as she went about her house-work. Only by those unconscious
sobs and outcries, inaudible to himself, did he betray the grief that
was gnawing at his heart. Very often did Phebe put aside her work, and
standing before him ask such questions as the following on her swiftly
moving fingers.

"Don't you believe in God, our Father in heaven, the Father Almighty,
who made us?"

"