John stood still, with his eyes fixed on the piece of gold. It lay on the table like a guilty thing. All Pyn's sin seemed to have passed into it. Men and women stood up to look at it where it lay--the wretched tool of a bad man. It was a relief when Jacob Trenager gave out a hymn, a greater relief that John Penelles went out while they were singing it. Brothers and sisters all wished to talk about John and John's trouble, but to talk to him in his grief and humiliation was a different thing. Only the old chapel-keeper watched him going along the rocky coast at a dangerous speed, his lantern swinging wildly to his big strides. But a five-minutes' walk brought John to a place where he was alone with God and the sea. Oh, then, how he cried out for pity! for comfort! for help! for forgiveness! His voice was not the inaudible pleading of a man praying in his chamber; it was like the despairing call of a strong swimmer in the death-billows. It went out over the ocean; it went out beyond time and space; it touched the heart of the Divinity who pitieth the sufferers, "even as a father pitieth his children." There was a glow of firelight through his cottage window, but no candle. Joan was bending sorrowfully over the red coals. John was glad of the dim light, glad of the quiet, glad of the solitude, for Joan was only his other self--his sweeter and more hopeful self. He told her all that had passed. She stood up beside him, she held his head against her breast and let him sob away there the weight of grief and shame that almost choked him. Then she spoke bravely to the broken-down, weary man: "John, my old dear, don't you sit on the ash-heap like Job, and bemoan yourself and your birthday, and go on as if the devil had more to do with you than with other Christians. Speak up to your Heavenly Father, and ask Him 'why,' and answer Him like a man; do now! And go to Exeter in the morning, and make yourself sure that Denas be a honest woman. I, her mother, be sure of it; but there then! men do be so bad themselves, they can't trust their own hearts, nor their own ears and eyes. 'I believe' will make a woman happy; but a man, God knows, they must go to the law and the testimony, or they are not satisfied. It's dreadful! dreadful!" They talked the night away, and early in the morning John went to Exeter. With the proofs of his daughter's marriage in his hand, he felt as if he could face his enemies. Joan was equal to them without it. She knew they would find her out, and they found her singing at her work. Her placid face and cheery words of welcome nonplussed the most spiteful; the majority who came to triumph over her went away without being able to say one of the many evil thoughts in their hearts; and not a few found themselves hoping and wishing good things for the bride.