"Your grandfather, Mr. Howard Stennis, is dying," she said solemnly. "He has had a stroke, and may pass away at any moment. Two doctors from Longtown and East Dene have come all the way to visit him. They give no hope. But he gets no rest, crying out constantly that he cannot die without seeing you. And you must come instantly. I am here to beseech you. Behold in me the spirit of a father pleading for a daughter's forgiveness." She seized me by the arm. In a sudden access of terror, I wrenched myself free, and instantly Miss Orrin began to sob. She sank on her knees before me. "I know I have no right to ask," she said. "You have been shamefully treated, and have no need to forgive. But as you hope for pardon yourself, hasten and come to your grandfather, that he may hear you pardon him before he dies. If not, the sin of his uneasy spirit will be upon your head! Besides"--her voice dropped to a whisper--"there is something that he wishes to confess to you concerning your mother. It is on his conscience. He cannot die without telling you. Come--come! By the forgiveness you hope for yourself, or for those dear to you, I bid you come!" I lifted her up, and obeying a sudden impulse, I turned with her down the lane which led from the corner where she had surprised me, away from the school-house. I cannot tell you how I came to do it. I had expected--why, I know not--some one else to meet me there. Well, I suppose I may say--Joe Yarrow. And the thought that he was philandering his time away with those Caws made me ready for almost anything. Besides, I had been to Moat Grange House before. I knew that Mr. Ablethorpe went there regularly, and that he had services with the poor mad folk. So I was not nearly so afraid of Aphra Orrin as I had been. It was bright and clear still, though the morning was overcasting a little, as we passed through the meadows. There is a private road most of the way till you enter the woods of Deep Moat. The people of the Moat Grange, therefore, never had any need to cross Brom Common or go the way that we had always taken--Joe and I--on our expeditions and researches. All the way Miss Orrin talked incessantly of my grandfather, of how that he had been like a saviour to her poor sisters and herself, receiving them when they would have been shut up in an asylum, and of a certainty would have died there. She spoke also of his kindness to herself. "They call him the Golden Farmer," she said. "And of a truth that is what he has been to us, for his heart is of pure gold."