"She has disgraced my gray hairs, and made me a reproach and a shame. I will not see her. Bid her begone. I will not speak to her or look at her. How came she there? When did she come?" Then Fanny told her father the whole story,--everything as it occurred, and did not forget to add her own conviction that Carry's life had been decent in all respects since the Vicar had found a home for her in Salisbury. "You would not have it go on like that, father. She is naught to our parson." "I will pay. As long as there is a shilling left, I will pay for her. She shall not live on the charity of any man, whether parson or no parson. But I will not see her. While she be here you may just send me my vittels to the mill. If she be not gone afore night, I will sleep here among the sacks." She stayed with him till the labourer came, and then she returned to the house, having failed as yet to touch his heart. She went back and told her story to her mother, and then a part of it to Carry who was still in bed. Indeed, she had found her mother by Carry's bedside, and had to wait till she could separate them before she could tell any story to either. "What does he say of me, Fan?" asked the poor sinner. "Does he say that I must go? Will he never speak to me again? I will just throw myself into the mill-race and have done with it." Her sister bade her to rise and dress herself, but to remain where she was. It could not be expected, she said, but that their father would be hard to persuade. "I know that he will kill me when he sees me," said Carry. At eight o'clock Fanny took the old man his breakfast to the mill, while Mrs. Brattle waited on Carry, as though she had deserved all the good things which a mother could do for a child. The miller sat upon a sack at the back of the building, while the hired man took his meal of bread and cheese in the front, and Fanny remained close at his elbow. While the old man was eating she said nothing to him. He was very slow, and sat with his eyes fixed upon the morsel of sky which was visible through the small aperture, thinking evidently of anything but the food that he was swallowing. Presently he returned the empty bowl and plate to his daughter, as though he were about at once to resume his work. Hitherto he had not uttered a single word since she had come to him. "Father," she said, "think of it. Is it not good to have mercy and to forgive? Would you drive your girl out again upon the streets?" The miller still did not speak, but turned his face round upon his daughter with a gaze of such agony that she threw herself on the sack beside him, and clung to him with her arms round his neck. "If she were such as thee, Fan," he said. "Oh, if she were such as thee!" Then again he turned away his face that she might not see the tear that was forcing itself into the corner of his eye.