‘I must tell you, Mr. Babb, that your son Jasper is with us. He professes to have lost the money. He met with an accident and was nearly killed. He remains with us, as a sort of steward to my father, for a while, only for a while.’ ‘Let him stay. I don’t want him back, I won’t have him back. I dare say, now, it would do him good to have his Bible. I’ll give you that to take to him. He may read and come to repentance.’ ‘It is possible that there may be other things of his he will want. If you can make them up into a bundle, I will send for them. No,’ she said after a pause, ‘I will not send for them. I will take them myself.’ ‘You will not mind staying there whilst I fetch them?’ said Mr. Babb. ‘Of course you won’t. You have the horse to hold. If you like to take a look round the garden you may, but there is nothing to see. Visit the mill if you like. You can give twopence to a boy to hold the horse.’ Then he slipped in again and relocked the door. Barbara was only detained ten minutes. Mr. Babb came back with a jumble of clothes, a Bible, and a violin, not tied together, but in his arms anyhow. He threw everything on the doorstep. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I will hold the bridle, whilst you make this into a bundle. I’m not natty with my fingers.’ He took the horse from her. Barbara knelt under the portico and folded Jasper’s clothes, and tied all together in an old table cover the father gave for the purpose. ‘Take the fiddle,’ he said, ‘or I’ll smash it.’ She looked up at him gravely, whilst knotting the ends. ‘Have you a message for your son—of love and forgiveness?’ ‘Forgiveness! it is your father he has robbed. Love——There is no love lost between us.’ ‘He is lonely and sad,’ said Barbara, not now looking up, but busy with her hands, tightening the knots and intent on the bundle. ‘I can see that his heart is aching; night and day there is a gnawing pain in his breast. No one loves him, and he seems to me to be a man who craves for love, who might be reclaimed by love.’ ‘Don’t forget the letter for your father,’ said Mr. Babb. ‘What about your son? Have you no message for him?’ ‘None. Mind that envelope. What it contains is precious.’ ‘Is it a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds?’ ‘Oh, dear me, no! It is a text of scripture.’ Then, hastily, Mr. Babb stepped back, shut the door, and bolted and chained it. CHAPTER XIV. A SINE QUÂ NON.