"And ever since ... since I ate ... the fruit," went on Ranulph, "everything has frightened me ... at least, not only since then, because it did before too, but it's much worse now. Like that cheese tonight ... anything can suddenly seem queer or terrible. But since ... since I ate that fruit I sometimes seem to see the reason why they're terrible. Just as I did tonight over the cheese, and I was so frightened that I simply couldn't keep quiet another minute." Master Nathaniel groaned. He too had felt frightened of homely things. "Father," said Ranulph suddenly, "What does the cock say to you?" Master Nathaniel gave a start. It was as if his own soul were speaking to him. "What does he say to me?" He hesitated. Never before had he spoken to anyone about his inner life. In a voice that trembled a little, for it was a great effort to him to speak, he went on, "He says to me, Ranulph, he says ... that the past will never come again, but that we must remember that the past is made of the present, and that the present is always here. And he says that the dead long to be back again on the earth, and that...." "No! No!" cried Ranulph fretfully, "he doesn't say that to me. He tells me to come away ... away from real things ... that bite one. That's what he says to me." "No, my son. No," said Master Nathaniel firmly. "He doesn't say that. You have misunderstood." Then Ranulph again began to sob. "Oh, father! father!" he moaned, "they hunt me so--the days and nights. Hold me! Hold me!" Master Nathaniel, with a passion of tenderness such as he had never thought himself capable of, lay down beside him, and took the little, trembling body into his arms, and murmured loving, reassuring words. Gradually Ranulph stopped sobbing, and before long he fell into a peaceful sleep. CHAPTER IV ENDYMION LEER PRESCRIBES FOR RANULPH Master Nathaniel awoke the following morning with a less leaden heart than the circumstances would seem to warrant. In the person of Ranulph an appalling disgrace had come upon him, and there could be no doubt but that Ranulph's life and reason were both in danger. But mingling with his anxiety was the pleasant sense of a new possession--this love for his son that he had suddenly discovered in his heart, and it aroused in him all the pride and the pleasure that a new pony would have done when he was a boy. Besides, there was that foolish feeling of his that reality was not solid, and that facts were only plastic toys; or, rather, that they were poisonous plants, which you need not pluck unless you choose. And, even if you do pluck them, you can always fling them from you and leave them to wither on the ground. He would have liked to vent his rage on Willy Wisp. But during the previous winter Willy had mysteriously disappeared. And though a whole month's wages had been owing to him, he had never been seen or heard of since.