She looked the very impersonation of comfort and consolation, this gentle, confiding, Miranda-like being, as she quietly glided across the park towards the farm. An old shepherd dog came bounding up to her, and leaping for joy, in its half-blind, shambling fashion; a little group of deer trotted off before her, but turned round to look, and said as plainly as could be, “We should not have moved, had it not been for that villainous dog;” ducks, and hens, and chickens, all came round about her as she entered the farm enclosure; a great furry cat came and purred beside her; and Mr. Somerton’s blackbird, which hung by the window in a wicker cage, began to sing so merrily that you could hardly hear the whirr and rattle of the threshing-machine, which was hard at work in the adjacent stack-yard. Whilst Amy Somerton was pacing to and fro in her chamber at the Hall, Phœbe Tallant fulfilled her office at the Hall Farm, and endeavoured in a hundred gentle, gracious ways to console the bailiff and his wife. So far as Luke was concerned, she was not unsuccessful, but Mrs. Somerton gave way to her feelings without the slightest regard to Amy’s consolatory observations. The farmer’s wife seemed to arraign all humanity as if it were in a conspiracy against her, and she was almost rude to Miss Tallant, so much so that Luke interposed in an authoritative manner, and Phœbe looked hurt and concerned. This only changed the manner of Mrs. Somerton’s complainings. She was satisfied that Paul was guilty. He must have stolen the purse; it didn’t often happen, she went on, that people got charged with offences of that kind unless they deserved it. All her children went wrong; none of them cared for her; none of them made any return to her for all her care. Nobody knew her trials, nobody could understand her troubles; all she hoped was, that the time would come soon, when they would be ended for ever. Luke Somerton rated his wife in a quiet, manly fashion for her injustice towards Paul, and her unkind return for the generous attention of Miss Tallant; and by-and-by Mrs. Somerton began to cry, and that was a sufficient apology to the rich merchant’s daughter, who sat beside the bailiff’s wife and said all sorts of comforting things, whilst Mr. Somerton set about packing up a carpet-bag for the purpose of going to London; and eventually Miss Somerton presented herself, and requested that she might be permitted to accompany her father. CHAPTER XX. SHOWS HOW THE PURSE FOUND ITS WAY INTO PAUL SOMERTON’S BOX. In this world the victory is not always with the good and the true. It has shaken many a man’s faith before now to see the wicked and the selfish thrive, whilst the noble, and the generous, and the pure, were beggars.