The memory of a text, too, which she had learned as a child began to be present with her. Her head was aching, and the text, with its well-known words, tormented her. "`Be sure your sin will find you out. Be sure--your sin--will find you out,'" murmured Annie in too low a tone for Saxon to hear. They had been met at the railway station with the information that Mr Brooke was still alive, and Saxon uttered a sigh of relief. Then his journey had not been in vain. Then the old man would be gratified. The greatest longing and wish of his life would be fulfilled. The darling of his heart would be with him at the end. John Saxon turned and looked at the girl. She was crouching up in the gig. She felt cold, for the evenings were turning a little chill. She had wrapped an old cloak, which Mrs Shelf had sent, around her slim figure. Her small, fair face peeped out from beneath the shelter of the cloak. Her eyes had a terrified light in them. Saxon felt that, for Mr Brooke's sake, Annie must not enter the Rectory in her present state of wild revolt and rebellion. He suddenly turned down a shady lane which did not lead direct to the Rectory. His action awoke no sort of notice in Annie's mind. Her uncle was alive; he probably was not so very bad after all. This was a plot of John Saxon's--a plot to destroy her happiness. But for John, how different would be her life now! They drove down about a hundred yards of the lane, and then the young man pulled the horse up and drew the gig towards the side of the road. This fact woke Annie from the sort of trance into which she had sunk, and she turned and looked at him. "Why are you stopping?" she asked. "Because I must speak to you, Annie," was her cousin's response. "Have you anything fresh to say? Is there anything fresh to say?" "There is something that must be said," replied John Saxon. "You cannot, Annie, enter the Rectory and meet Mrs Shelf, and, above all things, go into that chamber where your dear uncle is waiting for the Angel of Death to fetch him away to God, looking as you are doing now. You are, I well know, in a state of great mental misery. You have done wrong--how wrong, it is not for me to decide. I know of some of your shortcomings, but this is no hour for me to speak of them. All I can say at the present moment is this: that you are very young, and you are motherless, and--you are about, little Annie, to be fatherless. You are on the very eve of losing the noblest and best father that girl ever possessed. Your uncle has stood in the place of a father to you. You never appreciated him; you never understood him. He was so high above you that you could never even catch a glimpse of the goodness of his soul. But I cannot believe in the possibility of any one being quite without heart or quite without some sense of honour; and I should be slow, very slow, to believe it of you.