He must have had a good spell already. Shall
I stop and persuade him to go back home to bed?"

"Oh no," said Mabyn, who was all for getting on at any risk.

"Oh no," Wenna said, fearing the result of an encounter between the
two men.

"I must stop," Trelyon said. "It's such precious hard lines on him. I
shall easily persuade him that he would be better at home."

So he pulled up the horses, and quietly waited by the roadside for a
few minutes. The unknown rider drew nearer and more near.

"That isn't Roscorla's pony," said Trelyon listening. "That's more
like your father's cob."

"My father!" said Wenna in a low voice.

"My darling, you needn't be afraid, whoever it is," Trelyon said.

"Certainly not," added Mabyn, who was far more uncomfortable than she
chose to appear. "Who can prevent us going on? They don't lock you up
in convents now-a-days. If it is Mr. Roscorla, you just let me talk to
him."

Their doubt on that head was soon set at rest. White Charley, with his
long swinging trot, soon brought George Rosewarne up to the side of
the phaeton, and the girls, long ere he had arrived, had recognized in
the gloom the tall figure of their father. Even Mabyn was a trifle
nervous.

But George Rosewarne--perhaps because he was a little pacified by
their having stopped--did not rage and fume as a father is expected to
do whose daughter has run away from him. As soon as he had pulled up
his horse he called out in a petulant tone, "Well! what the devil is
all this about?"

"I'll tell you, sir," said Trelyon, quite respectfully and quite
firmly: "I wished to marry your daughter Wenna--"

"And why couldn't you do that in Eglosilyan, instead of making a fool
of everybody all round?" Rosewarne said, still talking in an angry and
vexed way, as of one who had been personally injured.

"Oh, dada," Mabyn cried, "you don't know how it happened; but they
couldn't have got married there. There's that horrid old wretch, Mr.
Roscorla--and Wenna was quite a slave to him and afraid of him--and
the only way was to carry her away from him; and so--"

"Hold your tongue, Mabyn," her father said. "You'd drive a windmill
with your talk."

"But what she says is true enough," Trelyon said. "Roscorla has a
claim on her: this was my only chance, and I took it. Now look here,
Mr. Rosewarne: you've a right to be angry and all that--perhaps you
are--but what good will it do you to see Wenna left to marry
Roscorla?"

"What good wil