The evening light brought out detail in the great grey tower above them. Seed of fern had found the ledges and run little lines of dim green along them. Over the battlements a white image of a cock hung for weather-vane. The churchyard extended so that the evening sun flung the shadows of the gravestones upon neighbour mounds, and Mrs. Trivett pointed this out. “All his life long Noah Peeke darkened his daughter’s life,” she said, “and now you see his slate flings a shadow on her grave, poor woman.” She put her nosegay on the raw-grass-clods built up over the sleeping place of Miss Peeke, and removed some dead flowers. Then they climbed the hill and extended their ramble with the children running on before. “My friend, Nancy Peeke, was father-ridden,” explained Lydia. “She sacrificed herself to her widowed father, and though a good few offered for her, she never left him. He reigned over her like a proper tyrant, but he never saw what he was doing and wasn’t grateful to the day she closed her eyes. By that time it was too late to do much herself; and he ruled from the grave you may say, because up to her last illness, what her father would have done was always the ruling passion in her. It worked unconsciously; but it worked. He ruined her life so far as we can say it. However, she’s at peace now. Death’s only a King of Terrors to the living. He can’t fright her no more—nor her father can’t neither.” “Take care people don’t say the same of you,” warned Medora. “You’re Aunt Polly’s drudge at present, and many people know it quite well and think it a shameful thing at your age—nobody more than Mr. Knox; and when Jordan understands about it, he’ll protest as much as I do.” But Mrs. Trivett never allowed conversation personal to herself if she could prevent it. Now she challenged Kellock, who had been very silent, and made him talk. CHAPTER XX PHILANDER’S FATE Medora’s mother found increasing matter for agitation in the attitude of Ned Dingle. She had seen him twice and urged the need of action. She had even offered to give him all her small savings towards the legal cost of the operation. And then he had startled and shocked her a good deal by two statements, neither of which Lydia had expected. “All in good time,” he had said. “I don’t feel any particular call to hurry myself on their account. Plenty of time when I’ve settled my new job. As to the cost, it would be particular hard if you, of all people, was called to part on such a subject, and I wouldn’t allow it for a moment. But when I do start on to it, my lawyer thinks I can bring a pretty hot case against Kellock for damages; so I dare say I shall knock expenses out of him, and a bit over. And the harder his savings are hit, the better every right thinking person will be pleased.”