uld
utter words of reproach. The dumb old man stood on the threshold, gazing
at his averted face and downcast head, and an inarticulate cry of
mingled rage and grief broke from his silent lips, such as Phebe herself
had never heard before, and which, years afterward, sounded at times in
Roland Sefton's ears.

It was nearly ten o'clock before they were on the road, old Marlowe
marching at the head of his horse, and Phebe mounted on her wiry little
pony, while Roland Sefton rode in front of the wagon at times. Their
progress was slow, for the oak furniture was heavy and the roads were
rough, leading across the moor and down steep hills into valleys, with
equally steep hills on the other side. The sky was covered with a thin
mist drifting slowly before the wind, and when the moon shone through
it, about two o'clock in the morning, it was the waning-moon looking sad
and forlorn amid the floating vapor. The houses they passed were few and
far between, showing no light or sign of life. All the land lay around
them dark and desolate under the midnight sky; and the slow creaking of
the wheels and sluggish hoof-beats of the horse dragging the wagon were
the only sounds that broke the stillness.

In this gloom old Marlowe could hold no conversation either with Phebe
or Roland Sefton, but from time to time they could hear him sob aloud as
he trudged on in his speechless isolation. It was a sad sound, which
pierced them to the heart. From time to time Roland Sefton walked up the
long hills beside Phebe's pony, pouring out his whole heart to her. They
could hardly see each other's faces in the dimness, and words came the
more readily to him. All the burden of his confession was that he had
fallen through seeking Felicita's happiness. For her sake he had longed
for more wealth, and speculated in the hope of gaining it, and tampered
with the securities intrusted to him in the hope of retrieving losses.
It was for her, and her only, he maintained; and now he had brought
infamy and wretchedness and poverty upon her and his innocent children.

"Would to God I could die to-night!" he exclaimed; "my death would save
them from some portion of their trouble."

Phebe listened to him almost as heart-broken as himself. In her
singularly solitary life, so far apart from ordinary human society, she
had never been brought into contact with sin, and its profound,
fathomless misery; and now it was the one friend, whom she had loved the
longest a