Their hands met for an instant, and then they separated, and, with as few words to others as possible, went upstairs to their rooms--in each heart alike a desire to give assistance that was as pure as human frailty and self-interest would permit. If Tim’s brave defence were due only to his love, if Alice’s sisterly anxiety were influenced by other feelings too, it is at any rate certain that the friendship of each was pure and steadfast, and likely to endure the strain that trouble brings. For trouble was coming, the friends were not deceived--the clouds which had always lowered over Jenny Salter’s quiet home were threatening to overwhelm it at length in utter ruin. The beginning of evil had seemed hard enough--but we are more impressed with the danger of the future than of the present when we stand in darkness before the storm has fallen. CHAPTER XXIV NAT IN DESPAIR THE rest must follow--was already on its way, in as sure a course as that of the golden autumn days--and already with speculations concerning Jenny Salter’s daughter were mingled others with regard to her son. For the lad was altered, that could not be denied--the disgrace of his sister seemed to have wrought a change in him. Indeed it would be difficult to express in sufficiently vivid words the alteration that was observed in Nat--a change all the more apparent from the strength and youth which continued persistently to belong to him. His hair was still crisp, with a tendency to curl, his colour still bright with heat and harvest-work; and beneath the broad straw hat, convenient for harvest-time, his face was as handsome as it had ever been. But he seemed careworn, was restless and abstracted, started when he was called, preferred to work alone--to his features had come that look of ceaseless trouble which does not often accompany the trouble of the young. The disgrace of his sister might account for this alteration, but there appeared to be much that was strange in it all the same. Poor Nat! he could not have told, even if he had asked himself, how much of his own trouble was caused by his sense of the continual suspicion under which his sister lay--the abiding home-grief, which was renewed every evening by the sight of her obstinate silence and his mother’s dumb despair. It was that sense of disgrace which aggravated the knowledge that he himself deserved disgrace; the double weight was a load intensified, a burden that had become unendurable. At night, when he awoke, he could hear himself muttering; but in the day-time his pride supported him, and his misery was dumb. For he had no friend to whom he could confide his trouble, and the atmosphere of his home-life had not been one of confidences.