At five o'clock on the following morning the miller went out from the house to his mill, according to his daily practice. Fanny heard his heavy step, heard the bar withdrawn, heard the shutters removed from the kitchen window, and knew that her father was as yet in ignorance of the inmate who had been harboured. Fanny at once arose from her bed, careful not to disturb her companion. She had thought it all out, whether she would have Carry ready dressed for an escape, should it be that her father would demand imperiously that she should be sent adrift from the mill, or whether it might not be better that she should be able to plead at the first moment that her sister was in bed, tired, asleep,--at any rate undressed,--and that some little time must be allowed. Might it not be that even in that hour her father's heart might be softened? But she must lose no time in going to him. The hired man who now tended the mill with her father came always at six, and that which she had to say to him must be said with no ear to hear her but his own. It would have been impossible even for her to remind him of his daughter before a stranger. She slipped her clothes on, therefore, and within ten minutes of her father's departure followed him into the mill. The old man had gone aloft, and she heard his slow, heavy feet as he was moving the sacks which were above her head. She considered for a moment, and thinking it better that she should not herself ascend the little ladder,--knowing that it might be well that she should have the power of instant retreat to the house,--she called to him from below. "What's wanted now?" demanded the old man as soon as he heard her. "Father, I must speak to you," she said. "Father, you must come down to me." Then he came down slowly, without a word, and stood before her waiting to hear her tidings. "Father," she said, "there is some one in the house, and I have come to tell you." "Sam has come, then?" said he; and she could see that there was a sparkle of joy in his eye as he spoke. Oh, if she could only make the return of that other child as grateful to him as would have been the return of his son! "No, father; it isn't Sam." "Who be it, then?" The tone of his voice, and the colour and bearing of his face were changed as he asked the question. She saw at once that he had guessed the truth. "It isn't--it isn't--?" "Yes, father; it is Carry." As she spoke she came close to him, and strove to take his hand; but he thrust both his hands into his pockets and turned himself half away from her. "Father, she is our flesh and blood; you will not turn against her now that she has come back to us, and is sorry for her faults." "She is a--" But his other daughter had stopped his mouth with her hand before the word had been uttered. "Father, who among us has not done wrong at times?"