But Philip did not fathom Annie's mind: Scarce could the woman when he came upon her, Out of full heart and boundless gratitude Light on a broken word to thank him with. But Philip was her children's all-in-all; From distant corners of the street they ran To greet his hearty welcome heartily; Lords of his house and of his mill were they; Worried his passive ear with petty wrongs Or pleasures, hung upon him, play'd with him And call'd him Father Philip. Philip gain'd As Enoch lost; for Enoch seem'd to them Uncertain as a vision or a dream, Faint as a figure seen in early dawn Down at the far end of an avenue, Going we know not where: and so ten years, Since Enoch left his hearth and native land, Fled forward, and no news of Enoch came. It chanced one evening Annie's children long'd To go with others, nutting to the wood, And Annie would go with them; then they begg'd For Father Philip (as they call'd him) too: Him, like the working bee in blossom-dust, Blanch'd with his mill, they found; and saying to him 'Come with us Father Philip' he denied; But when the children pluck'd at him to go, He laugh'd, and yielding readily to their wish, For was not Annie with them? and they went. But after scaling half the weary down, Just where the prone edge of the wood began To feather toward the hollow, all her force Fail'd her; and sighing 'let me rest' she said. So Philip rested with her well-content; While all the younger ones with jubilant cries Broke from their elders, and tumultuously Down thro' the whitening hazels made a plunge To the bottom, and dispersed, and beat or broke The lithe reluctant boughs to tear away Their tawny clusters, crying to each other And calling, here and there, about the wood. But Philip sitting at her side forgot Her presence, and remember'd one dark hour Here in this wood, when like a wounded life He crept into the shadow: at last he said Lifting his honest forehead 'Listen, Annie, How merry they are down yonder in the wood.' 'Tired, Annie?' for she did not speak a word. 'Tired?' but her face had fall'n upon her hands; At which, as with a kind anger in him, 'The ship was lost' he said 'the ship was lost! No more of that! why should you kill yourself And make them orphans quite?' And Annie said 'I thought not of it: but--I known not why-- Their voices make me feel so solitary.'