"I'm come as the head of the family, Humphrey," began the veteran, "and it ban't seemly that this here terrible day should pass over your head without any of your kith and kin speaking to you and comforting you. We laid the poor young man along with his mother in the second row of the Baskerville stones. My word! as Gollop said after the funeral, 'even in death the Baskervilles be a pushing family!' Our slates stretch pretty near from the church to the churchyard wall now." "Thank you for being there," answered his brother. "I couldn't have gone, because of the people. There was no maiming of the rite--eh?" "Not a word left out--all as it should be. Eight young men carried him, including a farmer or two, and my son Ned, and Heathman Lintern, and also my son Rupert--though where he came from and where he went to after 'twas ended, I don't know, and don't care. He's left me--to better himself--so he thinks, poor fool! A nice way to treat a good father." "You've lost a son, too, then--lost him to find him again, doing man's work. You'll live to know that he was right and you were wrong. But my son--my mind is turned rather rotten of late. After dark I can't get his dead face out of my eyes. Nought terrible, neither--just, in a word, 'dead.' He broke his neck--he didn't strangle himself. He knew what he was about. But there, I see it. Gone--and none knows what he was to me. He never knew himself; and for that matter I never knew myself, neither--till he was gone." "We never do know all other folk mean to us--not until they be snatched off. If anybody had told me how my son Rupert's going would have made such a difference, I'd not have believed it." "Then think of this house. You feel that--you with your store of children and Rupert, after all, but gone a few miles away to go on with his work and marry the proper wife you deny him. But me--nought left--nought but emptiness--no 'Good morning, father'; no 'Good night, father'; no ear to listen; no voice to ask for my advice. And I'd plotted and planned for him, Vivian; I'd made half a hundred little secret plans for him. I knew well the gentle fashion of man he was--not likely ever to make a fighter--and so I'd cast his life in a mould where it could be easy. He'd have come to know in time. But he never did know. He went out of it in a hurry, and never hinted a whisper of what he was going to do. If he'd but given me the chance to argue it out with him!" "We've acted alike, me and you," answered his brother; "and it ban't for any man to dare to say that either of us was wrong. When the young fall into error, 'tis our bounden duty to speak and save 'em if we've got the power. I don't hold with Rupert----" "No need to drag in your affairs. That case is very different. I did not treat my son like a child; I did not forbid him to marry and turn him out of doors." "Stay!" cried Vivian, growing red, "you mustn't speak so to me."