His long lonely life, with quiet grassy spots in it here and there, and nooks of peace, dedicated to art, was before him. He travelled over it again in the firelight. He saw himself a studious boy without playmates, without companions; he saw himself verging into manhood with a strangely awakened love of art and nature, and with only a poor broken-down painter taking any interest in the mysterious signs which his genius would make in spite of himself. He saw his humble home and his toiling parent; a mother without one gleam of sympathy in common with his aspirations, and who only bore querulously with his odd ways, and a father whose besetting sin was the bottle, which was his ruin. He thought of his early struggles, of his early privations, of the burning passionate love of his art. It was a rugged, broken road at the starting, and his first success had brought with it a bitter pang; it would have gladdened his heart to have given his father and mother this evidence of the practical correctness of his judgment, to have shown them how honourable art is, and how it elevates the humble worker into the highest rank, and places him on a level with princes. A lonely, lowly road, but by-and-by covered with mosses and soft grass, and sober flowers and shady ferns; and then umbrageous trees threw their arms over it, and gleams of sunshine came through the branches. Presently another figure appeared in this more cheerful path, but it only seemed to mock the student with its beauty, and to lure him on into hopes that would only strew his way again with broken rocks, and thorns, and rough places. All at once, however, the sun shone out full upon him, and the figure held out its hand, and smiled with truthful human eyes. And something said within him that he would have a companion at last to share his journey, and that the happy, happy goal was near. That same night Phœbe sat before the parlour-fire at the Hall Farm, with Mrs. Somerton on one side and Luke on the other. Her right hand lay quietly in her father’s, and she was talking cheerfully to them both. They had evidently had a long and affecting interview. The storm was past; the rush of the tempest was over; and it had left Mrs. Somerton gazing through tears at her daughter. No words of rebuke, no complaint, had been uttered by Phœbe; she had said nothing but what was kind and dutiful, nothing that could wound, except that her kindness stung her mother more than hard words would have done. The remorseful woman had burst out into sobs and heart-breaking lamentations at the first tender acts of filial forgiveness, and Luke had hardly known how to master his own feelings when, in reply to some remark of his conveying the thought that she would be ashamed of such a father, she had flung herself into his arms and called him Father.