All this time I never let my father know about Father L'Homme-Dieu. It would have seemed to him a terrible thing that his son should be friends with a priest of the Roman Church, which he held a thing accursed. I thought it no sin to keep his mind at peace, and clear of this thing, for a cloud was gathering over him, my poor father. I told Abby, however, good Abby Rock; and though it shocked her at first, she was soon convinced that I brought home good instead of harm from my talks with Father L'Homme-Dieu. She it was who begged me not to tell my father, and she knew him better than any one else did, now that my mother Marie was gone. She told me, too, of the danger that hung over my poor father. The dark moods, since my mother's death, came over him more and more often; it seemed, when he was in one of them, that his mind was not itself. He never slighted his work,--that was like the breath he drew,--but when it was done, he would sit for hours brooding by the fireplace, looking at the little empty chair where my mother used to sit and sing at her sewing. And sitting so and brooding, now and again there would come over him as it were a blindness, and a forgetting of all about him, so that when he came out of it he would cry out, asking where he was, and what had been done to him. He would forget, too, that my mother was gone, and would call her, "Mary! Mary!" so that one's heart ached to hear him; and then Abby or I must make it clear to him again, and see the dumb suffering of him, like a creature that had not the power of speech, and knew nothing but pain and remembrance.