"No, no, no! she cannot believe him guilty," she replied; "she thinks he could free himself, if he would only come home. She is far happier than Mrs. Sefton or me. I would lay down my life to have him true and honest and good again, as he used to be. I feel as if I was in a miserable dream." They were sitting together outside their cottage-door, with the level rays of the setting sun shining across the uplands upon them, and the fresh air of the evening breathing upon their faces. It was an hour they both loved, but neither of them felt its beauty and tranquillity now. "You love him next to me?" asked old Marlowe. "Next to you, father," she repeated. But the subtle jealousy in the father's heart whispered that his daughter loved these grand friends of hers more than himself. What could he be to her, deaf mute that he was? What could he do for her? All he had done had been swept away by the wrong-doing of this fine gentleman, for whom she was willing to lay down her life. He looked at her with wistful eyes, longing to hold closer, swifter communication with her than could be held by their slow finger-speech. How could he ever make her know all the love and pride pent up in his voiceless heart? Phebe, in her girlish, blind preoccupation, saw nothing of his eager, wistful gaze, did not even notice the nervous trembling of his stammering fingers; and the old man felt thrown back upon himself, in more utter loneliness of spirit than his life had ever experienced before. Yet he was not so old a man, for he was little over sixty, but his hard life of incessant toil and his isolation from his fellow-creatures had aged him. This bitter calamity added many years to his actual age, and he began to realize that his right hand was forgetting its cunning, his eye for beauty was growing dim, and his craft failing him. The long, light summer days kept him for a while from utter hopelessness. But as the autumn winds began to moan and mutter round the house he told himself that his work was done, and that soon Phebe would be a friendless and penniless orphan. "I ought not to have let Roland Sefton go," he thought to himself; "if I'd done my duty he would have been paying for his sin now, and maybe there would have been some redress for us that lost by him. None of his people will come to poverty like my Phebe. I could have held up my head if I had not helped him to escape from punishment." CHAPTER XII. RECKLESS OF LIFE. If old Marlowe, or Mr. Clifford himself, could have followed Roland Sefton during his homeless wanderings, their rigorous sense of justice would have been satisfied that he was not escaping punishment, though he might elude the arbitrary penalty of the law.