Before we reached home the clouds, which had been threatening all day, began to fall in showers of hail. We had not been in an hour when, as we were sitting over the hall fire, talking cheerily over the doings of the day, Roger suddenly entered, his face ashen-white, his eyes like burning coals, and, in a low voice, called my Father out to speak to him outside. For a few minutes, which seemed to me hours, we sat in suspense, Aunt Gretel's knitting falling on her lap, in entire disregard of consequence to the stitches--Aunt Dorothy's spinning-wheel whirling as if driven by the Furies. Then my Father returned alone, as pale as Roger. He seated himself again, with his arms on his knees and his hands over his face--an attitude I had never seen him in before. It made him look like an old man; and I remember noticing for the first that his hair was growing gray. No one asked any questions. At length, in a calm, low voice, my Father said,-- "Roger and Sir Launcelot Trevor have quarrelled. Roger struck Sir Launcelot, and he fell against one of the great logs of the bonfires. He is wounded severely, and Roger is going to ride to Cambridge for a physician." "In such a night!" said Aunt Gretel; "not a star; and the hail has been driving against the panes this half hour!" "It is the best thing Roger can do," said my Father, quietly. The next minute we heard the ring of a horse's hoofs on the pavement of the court, and then the sound of a long gallop dying slowly away on the road amidst the howling of the wind and the clattering of the hail. But no one spoke until the household were gathered for family prayer. There was no variation in the chapter read or in the usual words of prayer; only a tremulous depth in my Father's voice as he asked for blessings on the son and daughter of the house. And afterwards, as I wished him good-night, he leant his hand on my head, and said-- "Watch and pray, Olive--watch and pray, my child, lest ye enter into temptation." Then I knelt down, and hid my face on his knee, and said-- "O Father, Roger must have been sorely provoked--I am sure he was. I am sure it was not Roger's fault--I am sure; so sure! Sir Launcelot is so wicked, and I will never forgive him." "Roger said it was his fault, my poor little Olive," replied my Father, very tenderly, "and that he will never forgive _himself_. And whatever Sir Launcelot said or did, you must forgive him, and pray that God may forgive him; for he is very seriously hurt, and may die." "Roger would be sure to say that," I said. "He is always ready to blame himself and excuse every one else. But, O Father, God will not let Sir Launcelot die! What can we do?" "Pray! Olive," he said in a trembling voice--"pray!" and he went to his own room. But all night long, whenever I woke from fitful snatches of sleep, and went to the window to look if the storm had passed, and if Roger were coming, I saw the light burning in my Father's window.