Yet the true picture was there all the time, defying the brush of maudlin sentiment, as a masterpiece glimmers through a daub. The rights of the case spun between blame and praise like a feather between two mouths. Both Lancasters were strong men of a rare type that should be stuffed and labelled. They were also murderers, and should both have been drowned; truth-lovers, peace-rulers, regarding their charge as sacred; specious liars and hypocrites, afflicted with a grossly inordinate ambition. But, as a matter of fact, there was plenty of sympathy for the son, the supposed victim of forced loyalty to a weak employer and an arrogant parent, the creature of destiny, bound to take the course he did, a helpless, doomed sheep, like all the other martyrs of the marsh. There were certain well-meaning souls who pursued Lanty with such comforting extracts, but even these smug blunderers did not do it twice. Only Lup and Francey, over the sea, and Hamer, sadly silent, knew what he really felt about it all; and not they fully. There are debts a man pays in himself alone. He had resisted all attempts to get him away--Hamer’s pleasant plan for the Canaries had had a short existence and a sudden and violent death--but Helwise had not been defrauded of her tour. For a month she had spun luxuriously from place to place, petted and considered, chattering incessantly and happy as a singing kettle. And after that they had kept her at Watters for long enough, while Blenkinship’s Marget, lent to Lanty during his aunt’s absence, scrubbed and organised like an inspired fury, ruthlessly forcing the twittering Agnes through the mill of discipline and method, and feeding the silent master as he had hitherto been fed only in dreams. The transfer had been brought about by Dandy, cognisant, through bitter experience, of his need. But now Helwise was coming home, and King Muddle would have his own again. Wigmore, slowly returning to a semblance of health, had spent the summer recruiting at Bournemouth and yachting with Bluecaster, and was now at Watters, while over at Wild Duck Harriet entertained the whole Quetta family (whose real name was something quite different) with reckless generosity. Lanty had seen her with them at the various Shows, preaching Westmorland agriculture into puzzled foreign ears. He had also seen Stubbs, no longer requiring to be soothed with rotifers, hung about with Quetta-lings like a family elephant. But of Dandy he had seen nothing--nothing, that is, but, at intervals, a smiling, daintily-gracious transparency hovering on the borders of his clouded existence. Blotted out in a night of storm, she, who had come so near to meaning everything in his life, had ceased to mean anything at all. But to-night the old transfiguration was upon the once-loved fields, and everything was human and dear again, even as the friendly earth. At eventide there was light.