Nor were matters much more promising in the house of Nathan Blyth. After Lucy’s unpleasant experiences with Black Morris, and her exciting interview with Philip Fuller, she was a good deal flustered and disturbed, and when she entered the house, Nathan was constrained to notice her flushed face and disarranged attire. “Why Lucy, lass, you look as though you had been at work in a hayfield, and as warm as a dairymaid at a butter churn. If it had been any other girl I should have said that she’d been ‘gallivanting;’ but that’s not in my Lucy’s line, is it?” Lucy was not quite prepared for this sort of thing, but she never stooped to an evasion, and her maidenly intuitions led her at once to tell her father the events of the night. “Black Morris seized hold of me,” said she, “as I passed the churchyard. I think he was tipsy, and he ran after me. Philip heard me scream, and he brought me safely home.” Wrath against Black Morris rose high in the blacksmith’s heart, but the unconscious familiarity with which she mentioned “Philip,” as if there could be but one in the whole wide world, struck him so forcibly that he said,-- “Philip? Philip who? Do you mean Master Philip, at the Hall?” Poor Lucy saw in a moment all the force of her thoughtless slip of the tongue, and she could not for the life of her prevent her fluttering heart from imprinting its secret cipher on her cheek. The bashful, “Yes, father,” tore away the flimsy veil that hid her heart’s idol from her father’s view. “And how comes Philip Fuller’s name to flow so glibly from my lassie’s lips?” said Nathan, seriously. “My Lucy hasn’t learnt to listen to words of love from one who can never be aught to her, and whose life and hers must always be wide apart--has she?” The tears were in Lucy’s eyes, and her sweet lips quivered as she knelt by her father’s knee. “Father,” said she, “I can have no secrets from you. I have never seen, never met him, of my own accord; and since he told me of his love to me, and he couldn’t help it--[That’s right, Lucy, defend him to the last!]--I’ve done my best to avoid him. I have told him that it can never be, and I would sooner die than grieve you, my dear, kind father. But I do love him with all my heart, and he loves me--I know he does--and I’m very miserable! Oh, tell me, tell me, what am I to do?”--And the girl flung herself into his arms in a paroxysm of tears.