He felt that some apology, some explanation must be made. "I'm sorry, Mistress Lynn," he began, "I never meant, I didn't mean----" "Well," she gasped, "is that all; you didn't mean--what?" He straightened himself, looked the old woman full in the face. He was not a thief; he had wandered from the straight path; but the crooked way was not to his liking; it abounded in pitfalls, so he forsook it. "I own I've done wrong," he said with manly sincerity. "I was mad. Life has made me mad. It has frustrated all my hopes; it has put all its bad eggs into my basket. I lost my head in a weak moment. But that's over now. I shall not stumble again. If you've any heart to understand a man, you'll let me go now and ask no more." His appeal touched Mistress Lynn to the quick. She wiped her brow, and hid her trembling old mouth with the edge of the sheet. That ancient love which could not go out, though it might suffer an eclipse, began to shine again, and slowly illuminated her features, like an inner light. A cry that came from the soul had power to stir her. Deep called unto deep. The door opened and Barbara entered. She had heard the voices, and come down to learn the meaning of them. A shepherd's plaid of black and white check was thrown over her shoulders, and her hair hung in a glistening mass. The clearness of her face was like the coming of moonlight out of clouds. She stood on the threshold, looking from Joel to the old woman, then closing the door, moved to the four-poster. "Dost need me, great-granny?" she asked. Barbara's sudden entrance into that intense atmosphere caused a change to work among the elements, just as a wind rising on a sultry day, may mean the coming of storm, or the freshening of the weather. Joel was not sure whether to be glad or sorry. He looked at her in awe as a benighted traveller might look at a snow peak, which the rising moon all at once revealed towering overhead. He felt himself to be little better than a clod of earth in her presence. To her great-grandmother Barbara's coming was a relief. The old woman had received a blow, and however bravely she might hide the wound, she could not stanch its inward bleeding. For once she was glad to shift responsibility from her own to younger shoulders. "Sit thee down, Barbara," she said, "Joel's in sore trouble, and he has come to me. Very right and proper of him! For who else should he come to but his grandfather's old friend? Yet I don't ken what to do. Tell thy tale, my lad, but tell no more than a young lass's ears may hear."