ich enough, my father and me. This
cottage, and the fields about it, are our own. But I must go and tell
father."

"Must he be told?" asked Roland Sefton anxiously.

"We've no secrets," she replied; "and there's no fear of him, you know.
He would see if I was in trouble; and I shall be in trouble," she added,
in a sorrowful voice.

She opened the cottage door, and going out left him alone. It was a
familiar place to him; but hitherto it had been only the haunt of happy
holidays, from the time when he had been a school-boy until his last
autumn's shooting of grouse and woodcock on the wide moors. Old Marlowe
had been one of his earliest friends, and Phebe had been something like
a humble younger sister to him. If any one in the world could be
depended upon to help him, outside his own family, it must be old
Marlowe and his daughter.

And yet, when she left him, his first impulse was to rise and flee while
yet there was time--before old Marlowe knew his secret. Phebe was a
girl, living as girls do, in a region of sentiment and feeling, hardly
understanding a crime against property. A girl like her had no idea of
what his responsibility and his guilt were, money ranking so low in her
estimate of life. But old Marlowe would look at it quite differently.
His own careful earnings, scraped together by untiring industry and
ceaseless self-denial, were lost--stolen by the man he had trusted
implicitly. For Roland Sefton did not spare himself any reproaches; he
did not attempt to hide or palliate his sin. There were other
securities for small sums, like old Marlowe's, gone like his, and ruin
would overtake half a dozen poor families, though the bulk of the loss
would fall upon his senior partner, who was a hard man, of unbending
sternness and integrity. If old Marlowe proved a man of the same
inflexible stamp, he was lost.

But he sat still, waiting and listening. Round that lonely cottage, as
he well knew, the wind swept from whatever quarter it was blowing;
sighing softly, or wailing, moaning, or roaring past it, as ceaselessly
as the sound of waves against a fisherman's hut on the sea-coast. It was
crying and sobbing now, rising at intervals into a shriek, as if to warn
him of coming peril. He went to the window and met the black face of the
night, hiding everything from his eye. Neither moon nor star gleamed in
the sky. But even if old Marlowe was merciful he could not stay there,
but must go out, as he had done last ni