The God Almighty whom she had loved and praised and tried so hard to please from her earliest years seemed to have developed into a harsh and cruel tyrant. “Father was so good and kind and patient,” she cried, “and he had to put up with such a lot that no one ever knew of. Oh, God, tell me why you’ve done it, tell me why.” But God never answered, for God’s ways are not man’s ways, neither are His thoughts our thoughts. Yet though all Deborah’s feelings revolted against God she dared not own to it—not even in her deepest heart. “I’m very wicked,” she said earnestly. “It’s all for my good that father’s gone.” Then something within her rose burning hot and strong. “I don’t care if it is for my good. I hate the thought of it being for my good. Why should he have to suffer for my good? I’m not worth it. If that’s the case it makes it all the worse to bear. Besides, it isn’t for my good. I feel all black and ugly and uncertain and half stunned.” They brought her father’s body home and placed him in a better coffin, and then he was taken away to the churchyard in the North, to lie under the shadow of the great grand church, in the same grave with his wife. It was terribly strange when they brought him back into the house. Maggie and Deborah were in bed, and Maggie was asleep. “It’s him,” said Deborah to herself, sitting up in bed to hear the thud of feet. How helpless, how terribly silent was the entrance now! And he never came upstairs to kiss them nor to say how he’d fared whilst he had been away. No. And they didn’t jump out of bed and look over the banister, nor call to him. No, it was all different now. Yet last week at this time he’d been alive and moved about this very house, contemplating in all seriousness and desperation his own approaching death. Two days later they took him away again in the dark, cold morning. “It isn’t him,” cried Deborah, inwardly. “He could never die. I can’t live without him. He was everything to me. I don’t believe he could die. He was too great and good to ever die.” There came another piece of news. The farmer had been the sole trustee for £700. But when inquiries were made for it at the bank it was found that it had gone. There then lay the explanation of these two last seeming prosperous years. And all blamed him, for he was in the wrong, and the law is for the punishment of wrongdoers, and no man has a right to take his neighbour’s goods. Deborah at the time scarcely felt or understood this latter shame. The first blow had been so strong, so sure, that for the time it paralysed every other feeling beside. CHAPTER X It now seemed that a new and different life had begun—one in which the sky was dark and cold and grey, and in which there was no beauty. They had been very, very poor once before, but now they seemed even poorer, and life seemed a misery and an uncertain drag.