Jasper’s blood coursed hot through his veins. He was angry. He was a forbearing man, ready always to find an excuse for a transgressor, but this was a transgression too malicious to be easily forgiven. Jasper determined, now that he was at home, to see his father, and then to return to the Jordans as quickly as he could. He had ridden his own horse, that horse must have a night’s rest, but to-morrow he would return. He was thus musing when Mr. Babb came in. ‘You here!’ said the old man. ‘What has brought you to Buckfastleigh again? Want money, of course.’ Then snappishly, ‘You shan’t get it.’ ‘I am come,’ said his son, ‘because I had received information that you were ill. Have you been unwell, father?’ ‘I—no! I’m never ill. No such luck for you. If I were ill and helpless, you might take the management, you think. If I were dead, that would be nuts to you.’ ‘My father, you wrong me. I left you because I would no longer live this wretched life, and because I hate your unforgiving temper.’ ‘Unforgiving!’ sneered the old manufacturer. ‘Martin was a thief, and he deserved his fate. Is not Brutus applauded because he condemned his own son? Is not David held to be weak because he bade Joab spare Absalom?’ ‘We will not squeeze old crushed apples. No juice will run from them,’ replied Jasper. ‘The thing was done, and might have been forgiven. I would not have returned now had I not been told that you were dying.’ ‘Who told you that lie?’ ‘Walter.’ ‘He! He was ever a liar, a mocker, a blasphemer! How was he to know? I thank heaven he has not shown his jackanapes visage here since he left. I dying! I never was sounder. I am better in health and spirits since I am quit of my sons. They vexed my righteous soul every day with their ungodly deeds. So you supposed I was dying, and came here to see what meat could be picked off your father’s bones?’ Jasper remembered Watt’s sneer. It was clear whence the boy had gathered his mean views of men’s motives. ‘I’ll trouble you to return whence you came,’ said Ezekiel Babb. ‘No blessing has rested on me since I brought the strange blood into the house. Now that all of you are gone—you, Eve number one, and Eve number two, Martin and Walter—I am well. The Son of Peace has returned to this house; I can read my Bible and do my accounts in quiet, without fears of what new bit of mischief or devilry my children have been up to, without any more squeaking of fiddles and singing of profane songs all over the house. Come now!’—the old man raised his bushy brows and flashed a cunning, menacing glance at his son—’come now! if you had found me dead—in Abraham’s bosom—what would you have done? I know what Walter would have done: he would have capered up and down all over the house, fiddling like a devil, like a devil as he is.’ He looked at Jasper again, inquisitively. ‘Well, what would you have done?—fiddled too?’