"I could not call him 'Gerald,' even though we christened him so," explained Madelaine, as she stood beside her husband, looking down at the sleeping boy. "It was too precious a word to be used for anyone but you, and I got to speak of him as 'Robin' that first winter after we came to England, because of his bright eyes and rosy cheeks, and the name has stuck to him ever since."
The interview next morning was satisfactorily concluded, and Gerald was on his way back to Mrs. Potter's house.
His heart was lighter than it had been for many a long day, as he walked through the wood. Although a terribly dark cloud loomed ahead, a rainbow seemed to have thrown itself across the grey and troubled sky, and rays of love and hope shone all around.
It was still early, not yet nine o'clock, and he was congratulating himself on having encountered no one either on his way to or from Sea View Cottage. One more bend in the woodland path, and Mrs. Potter's chimneys would be in sight.
He swung round the turn, and almost collided with a man who was walking briskly in the opposite direction to which he was himself going.
Words of apology rose to his lips, but they died away in dismay before they were uttered.
He was face to face with Thomas Field.
"So it was you after all, and no ghost!" exclaimed the squire. "How is it that you have turned up here, Barker? What do you want with me, dogging my footsteps like this?"
To Gerald's surprise Field's countenance had assumed an expression of the utmost fear and dislike, as he suddenly realized who it was that had thus encountered him.
"I must have given him an uncommonly bad shock that night when I came upon him during the storm," thought Gerald, as his mind took a rapid survey of the past. "He looks perfectly terrified at the mere sight of me, though it is I who have cause to be frightened of him, not he of me. I suppose it's because he has so long accustomed himself to think of me as dead."