And yet, when she left him, his first impulse was to rise and flee while yet there was time--before old Marlowe knew his secret. Phebe was a girl, living as girls do, in a region of sentiment and feeling, hardly understanding a crime against property. A girl like her had no idea of what his responsibility and his guilt were, money ranking so low in her estimate of life. But old Marlowe would look at it quite differently. His own careful earnings, scraped together by untiring industry and ceaseless self-denial, were lost--stolen by the man he had trusted implicitly. For Roland Sefton did not spare himself any reproaches; he did not attempt to hide or palliate his sin. There were other securities for small sums, like old Marlowe's, gone like his, and ruin would overtake half a dozen poor families, though the bulk of the loss would fall upon his senior partner, who was a hard man, of unbending sternness and integrity. If old Marlowe proved a man of the same inflexible stamp, he was lost. But he sat still, waiting and listening. Round that lonely cottage, as he well knew, the wind swept from whatever quarter it was blowing; sighing softly, or wailing, moaning, or roaring past it, as ceaselessly as the sound of waves against a fisherman's hut on the sea-coast. It was crying and sobbing now, rising at intervals into a shriek, as if to warn him of coming peril. He went to the window and met the black face of the night, hiding everything from his eye. Neither moon nor star gleamed in the sky. But even if old Marlowe was merciful he could not stay there, but must go out, as he had done last night from his own home, lashed like a dog from every familiar hearth by an unseen hand and a heavy scourge. Phebe had not lingered, though she seemed long away. As she drew near the little workshop she saw the wagon half-laden with some church furniture her father had been carving, and with which he and she were to start at daybreak for a village about twenty miles off. She heard the light tap of his carving tools as she opened the door, and found him finishing the wings of a spread-eagle. He had pushed back the paper cap he wore from his forehead, which was deeply furrowed, and shaded by a few straggling tufts of gray hair. He took no notice of her entrance until she touched his arm with her hand; and then he looked at her with eyes, blue like her own, but growing dim with age, and full of the pitiful, uncomplaining gaze of one who is deaf and dumb. But his face brightened and his smile was cheerful, as he began to talk eagerly with his fingers, throwing in many gestures to aid his slow speech. Phebe, too, smiled and gesticulated in silent answer, before she told him her errand. "The carving is finished, father," she said. "Could we not start at once, and be at Upchurch before five to-morrow morning?" "Twenty miles; eight hours; easily," he answered; "but why?"