With wine came strength, and the suffering of her raw wrists was quickly lessened. She sank to sleep holding Annabel's hand; and when she was in easy slumber, the wife returned to her husband. He was sitting below beside a fire of peat, and he also slept heavily. She loosened his collar, and, though the touch was light as down, her hand at his throat awoke him. He leapt to his feet and cried out aloud and bade her stand back. "I meant to ease you," she said. Then he awoke and took her in his arms. "Forgive me. I dreamed an evil dream. Come, gentle nurse; I know that she sleeps, else you would not have left her. And you are heavy-eyed with much prayer and thanksgiving to God. How well I guess what's filled your heart since I brought her home! Now, wife, you may rest in peace." "Come you too," she answered. "And have not you also thanked the watching God? Surely I know that you have." CHAPTER XIII PETER TRIUMPHANT Peter Norcot had left Fox Tor Farm the night before Grace's discovery and return. Upon hearing this great news, he wrote a magnanimous letter of forgiveness, congratulation and quotation; but he did not follow it himself for the space of three days. Then the richer by information of very significant character, he reappeared at the dwelling of the Malherbs. Meantime the sorry truth had come to Grace. Cecil Stark and the leaders of the conspiracy at Prince Town were all suffering imprisonment in the cachots; John Lee was at Plymouth; Lovey Lee had vanished. These things she comprehended and mourned; her mother's grief at temporal troubles she also shared and understood; only her father had changed in every respect, and she could find little explanation for his actions. The crisis of his affairs approached, and yet he made no effort to avert it; once only she spoke to him concerning the amphora; but he desired her to leave the subject, and commanded her neither to return to her former prison nor mention the matter to anybody. "The affair is in my hands," he said; "I pray you, Grace, to leave it there for the present. Utter no word upon this subject. I have reasons strong enough for desiring silence." She promised, bewildered to think why her father could thus desert his treasure now that she had restored it to him; then Norcot arrived without invitation to spend a day or two. He quickly perceived that mighty changes marked the situation. His first intention had been to let the past alone; but, finding that Maurice Malherb was indifferent to it, and would not so much as express regret at all the indignity Peter had suffered, the lover, for the first time in his relations with his future father-in-law, struck a firmer note and permitted some flash of that steel in him to catch the other's eye. They rode together upon the land, and the subject was opened by Peter.