"Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward," began Betts, abruptly. "He did. I left him writing to you." The young man's voice was singularly gentle, even deferential. "You read it, I presume?" Newbury made a sign of assent. "Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?" Betts turned to look into his companion's face. A slight tremor in the normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question. Newbury's troubled eyes answered him. "You don't know what it costs us--not to be able to meet you--in that way!" "You think the arrangement we now propose--would still compromise you?" "How could we?" pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. "We should be aiding and abetting--what we believe to be wrong--conniving at it indeed; while we led people--deliberately--to believe what was false." "Then it is still your ultimatum--that we must separate?" "If you remain here, in our service--our representative. But if you would only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for you--elsewhere!" Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him. "I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it night and day. It's been my life. Other men have worked for their wives and children. I've worked for the farm. There are experiments going on there--you know it, Mr. Edward--that have been going on for years. They're working out now--coming to something--I've earned that reward. How can I begin anywhere else? Besides, I'm flagging. I'm not the man I was. The best of me has gone into that farm." He raised his arm to point. "And now, you're going to drive me from it." "Oh, Betts--why did you--why _did_ you!" cried Newbury, in a sudden rush of grief. The other turned. "Because--a woman came--and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields--a tiny thing. You made yourself kill it for mercy's sake--and then you sat down and cried over it--for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife--she _is_ my wife too!--is to me like that wounded thing. Only I've given her _life_!--and he that takes her from me will kill her." "And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?" Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled passion. "I have heard you quote them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a petition we all sent to the Bishop only last year." "That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,--so long ago. I've been through a lot since--a lot--" repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a stop. "Well, good morning to you, sir--good morning. There's something doing in the laboratory I must be looking after."