"To help Mr. Sefton," she said. "He wants to get down to Southampton, and Upchurch is in the way. Father, it must be done; you would never see a smile upon my face again if we did not do it." The keen, wistful eyes of her father were fastened alternately upon her troubled face and her moving hands, as slowly and silently she spelt out on her fingers the sad story she had just listened to. His own face changed rapidly from astonishment to dismay, and from dismay to a passionate rage. If Roland Sefton could have seen it he would have made good his escape. But still Phebe's fingers went on pleading for him; and the smile, which she said her father would never see again--a pale, wan smile--met his eyes as he watched her. "He has been so good to you and me," she went on, with a sob in her throat; and unconsciously she spoke out the words aloud and slowly as she told them off on her fingers; "he learned to talk with you as I do, and he is the only person almost in the world who can talk to you without your slate and pencil, father. It was good of him to take that trouble. And his father was your best friend, wasn't he? How good Madame used to be when I was a little girl, and you were carving all that woodwork at the old bank, and she let me stay there with you! All our happiest days have come through them. And now we can deliver them from great misery." "But my money?" he interposed. "Money is nothing between friends," she said eagerly. "Will you make my life miserable, father? I shall be thinking of them always, night and day; and they will never see me again if he is sent to jail through our fault. There never was a kinder man than he is; and I always thought him a good man till now." "A thief; worse than a common thief," said her father. "What will become of my little daughter when I am dead?" Phebe made no answer except by tears. For a few minutes old Marlowe watched her bowed head and face hidden in her hands, till a gray hue came upon his withered face, and the angry gleam died away from his eyes. Hitherto her slightest wish had been a law to him, and to see her weeping was anguish to him. To have a child who could hear and speak had been a joy that had redeemed his life from wretchedness, and crowned it with an inexhaustible delight. If he never saw her smile again, what would become of him? She was hiding her face from him even now, and there was no medium of communication between them save by touch. He must call her attention to what he had to say by making her look at him. Almost timidly he stretched out his withered and cramped hand to lay it upon her head. "I must do whatever you please," he said, when she lifted up her face and looked at him with tearful eyes; "if it killed me I must do it. But it is a hard thing you bid me do, Phebe."