"It was the increasing waywardness of the entire Orrin family which threatened to be the ruin of all my carefully planned scheme. If only I could have kept them as I first got them--Jeremy docile and comparatively easy of influence even in his hours of wildness, Aphra sage and wise in counsel, with a firm hand over the others, and all that property of Deep Moat Grange so excellently laid out, as if on purpose for our operations! "But, alas! Folly no more than wisdom will stand still. If only they had been like my web, full of subtle combinations and devices which none could work out in full beauty save myself, yet abiding still and waiting for my hand without the changing of a stitch! The Orrins were no more than my loom wherewith to spin gold--but--they would not bide as they were during my absences, however short. "The worst of it all was that, having once begun to operate on their own accounts, though most unfortunately and ill advisedly, they would no longer confine themselves to legitimate business. Not only Jeremy, but even Aphra must needs try to realize the most fantastic and impossible combinations, like some poor drudging weaver who should attempt to execute one of my patterns. It was not in them, the hare-brained, mauling crew, and naturally enough they spoiled the web. "First of all, there was the affair of that young vagabond's father, the rich shopkeeper at Breckonside--rich, that is, not as I am rich, but rich for a little town village anchored down on a dozen miles square of fertile lands between the Bewick marshes and the uplands of Cheviot. "Now, I had always had it in my head that some day a trifle might be made out of this Joseph Yarrow, senior. But he was a bold, straight-dealing man, who knew that the nearest bank, or a good investment through his lawyer, was the best way of keeping his head whole on his shoulders. He went and came ostentatiously along both our roads, by night or day--it mattered little to him. He had never more than five shillings and a brass watch in his pockets. All his business he did by cheque, and he was not at all ashamed to enter a shop, or even accost a man on the street of a town where he was known, and ask for the loan of five shillings--which was certain to be returned on the morrow, with a pot of home-made jam or some delicacy from the crowded shelves of his shop.