"I'll go through with it--rather than bring my own brother to the gallows," she thought with a vividness worthy of her Aunt Stroud. But which _was_ the way? what _should_ she do? Florence was so accustomed to trust to her own wits that where her wits were perfectly useless she felt like another person. She did not know the way, she could not get at Wyn, she could not undo the mischief! There was no one to help her! Suddenly there struck into her mind a new thought: "God." Now Florence had never _thought_ about God in her life. She knew about Him: on the very last Sunday before she left Rapley she had answered Miss Mordaunt's questions about His nature with a glib tongue, but without a trace of reverence in her manner or of awe in her heart. He was everywhere; He could see her in the dark and in the light; He knew her thoughts; He could hear her prayers. Such awful truths had been taught to her, and had been just as much a lesson as the multiplication table. But now, in the greatest need she had ever known, it did suddenly strike Florence that perhaps God would help her if she asked Him. She looked up--up through the dark trees to the pale clear sky above them, and associating praying with nothing but with "saying her prayers," she began to repeat the childish formulary which she was in the habit of scurrying over every night, and with a sudden thought added the words which little Lily had been taught to say: "Set wrongs right, bring travellers home." "Oh, God," whispered Florence, clasping her hands, "bring _me_--there! Save _them_ somehow." Something seemed let loose within her, and for the first time in her life she really prayed. And "Oh say not, dream not," that those unrealised lessons, that formal habit of prayer, had been hitherto all in vain. How could she have heard without a teacher? There was the knowledge, there was the instinct, so soon as the naughty, graceless girl felt the need. As she looked round, with a somewhat calmer inspection of the various footpaths, suddenly, in the stillness of the summer evening, she heard the tramp of a foot, and in a moment, round the great tree by which she stood, came the tall broad figure of a man with a long beard--surely the "character" who had given Wyn the letter. "Hullo, my girl," he said, stopping with a start at sight of a hatless maiden in a white apron, "what's the matter? Have you lost your way?" "Oh!" cried Florence, precipitating herself towards him, "I've got your letter--but--but, if you're my brother Harry that's come home--the keepers are going to seize you for a poacher!" CHAPTER FIFTEEN. FATHER AND SON.