So down came we into the kitchen, where was sat the blind man and the lad. We set down our baskets, and I gave the lad an apple at a sign from Aunt _Joyce_, which went toward the blind man and 'gan ask him if he were of those parts. He was a comely man of (I would judge) betwixt sixty and seventy years, and had a long white beard. He essayed to rise when Aunt _Joyce_ spake. "Nay, sit still, friend," saith she: "I dare reckon thou art aweary." "Ay," saith he in a sad tone: "weary of life and all things that be in it." "Ay so?" quoth she. "And how, then, of thine hope for the life beyond, where they never rest, yet are never weary?" "Mistress," saith he, "the sinner that hath been pardoned a debt of ten thousand talents may have peace, but can scarce dare rise to hope." "I am alway fain when a man reckoneth his debt heavy," saith Aunt _Joyce_. "We be mostly so earnest to persuade ourselves that we owe no farthing beyond an hundred pence." "I could never persuade myself of that," saith he, shaking his white head. "I have plunged too deep in the mire to have any chance to doubt the conditions of my clothing." It struck me that his manner of speech was something beyond a common beggar, and I could not but marvel if he had seen better days. "And what askest, friend?" saith Aunt _Joyce_, winch turned away from him and busied herself with casting small twigs on the fire. "A few waste victuals, if it like you, Mistress. They will be better than I deserve." "And if it like me not?" saith Aunt _Joyce_, suddenly, turning back to him, and methought there was a little trembling in her voice. "Then," saith he, "I will trouble you no further." "Then," saith she, to mine amaze, "I tell thee plainly I will not give them to such a sinner as thou hast been, by thine own confession." "Be it so," he saith quietly, bowing his white head. "I cry you mercy for having troubled you, and I wish you a good morrow." "That shalt thou never," came from Aunt _Joyce_, in a voice which was not hers. "Didst thou count _I_ was blind? _Leonard_, _Leonard_!" And she clasped his hands in hers, and drew him back to the fireside. "`Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry. For this my love was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.' My God, I thank Thee!" And then, out of the white hair and the blind blue eyes, slowly came back to me the face of that handsome gentleman which had so near beguiled our _Milisent_ to her undoing, and had wrought such ill in _Derwentdale_. "_Joyce_!" he saith, in a greatly agitated voice. "I would never have come hither, had I reckoned thou shouldst wit me." "Thou wert out of thy reckoning, then," she answereth. "I tell thee, as I told _Dulcie_ years agone, that were I low laid in my grave, I should hear thy step upon the mould above me."