Volume One—Chapter Ten.
A Cloudy Sky.
“Oh, father, I’m so glad you’ve come.”
This was Ben Hayle’s greeting as he reached the keeper’s lodge.
“Eh? Are you?” he said, with an assumed look of ignorance; but the corners of his eyes were twitching, and he was asking himself how he was to tell his child matters that would nearly break her heart, as he yielded his hand to hers, and let her press him back into his windsor arm-chair. “Nothing the matter, is there?”
She knelt at his feet, and told him all that had passed, and the strong man’s muscles jerked, and his grasp of her arm grew at times painful. As she went on, he interjected a savage word from time to time.
“Good girl, good girl. It has hurt you, my darling, but it was right to tell me all, and keep nothing back.”
Then he laid his hand softly on her glossy hair, and sat staring straight before him at the window, the moments being steadily marked off by the tick-tack of the old eight-day clock in the corner, and no other sound was heard in the room.