"Robert," said Michael suddenly, and with the strength of a man who gathers himself up to do what for a long time he has been afraid to do, and is even bolder apparently than if he had known no fear, "I have spoken my mind to you as God in heaven bade me about Miss Shipton, and this is the last word I shall say. He knows that I have prayed for you from your childhood up--that I have prayed that, above everything, he would grant that you should have one of His own for your wife, who should bring up your children in the fear of the Lord. He alone knows how I have wrestled for you day and night, ay, in the dark hours of the night; for you are my only son, and I looked that you and she whom God might choose for you should be the delight and support of my old age. But it is not to be. God has, for His own good purposes, not blessed me as He has blessed others, and the home for which I hoped I am not to have. Oh, my son, my son!" He had meant to say more, but at the moment he could not. "Father, father!" said Robert, much moved--the anger he usually felt at his father's references to Susan Shipton melting into pity--"why not? why not? You don't know Susan; you condemn her just because she don't go to our meeting. She shall love you like your own child." Another man would, perhaps, have relented, but his system was wrought into his very marrow--a part of himself in a manner incomprehensible. The distinction between the world and the Church is now nothing to us. We are on the best of terms with people who every Sunday are expressly assigned to everlasting fire. But to Michael the distinction was what it was to Ephraim MacBriar. The Spirit descended on him--whose spirit, it is not for us to say. "Are you sure of Miss Shipton, Robert?" "Sure of her, father! What do you mean?" "Do you know what she has been in time past?" "I don't understand you." "Do you know why Cadman left the Shiptons?" Robert stopped suddenly as if struck by a blow, and then his behaviour instantly changed. He completely forgot himself and was furious. "Father, I say it is a wicked, cruel shame--a wicked, cruel lie. I do not care if I tell you so. I will not listen to it," and he tore himself away. He believed it was a lie--believed it with the same distinctness as he believed in the existence of the hedge by his side which lacerated his hand as he turned round; and yet the lie struck him like a poisoned barbed arrow, and he could not drag himself loose from it. No man could have loved Desdemona better than Othello, and yet, before there was any evidence, did he not say of Iago-- "This honest creature doubtless Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds."