.... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with each other; I started sulkily for home. As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came down with a thud. “The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall.” I made up my mind to pack, and go away. But there's a strangeness, a sort of haunting fascination in it all. To you, who don't know the people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly. But it isn't the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in life. It's the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or evil. The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good news. John Ford himself opened the door to me. He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an intruder; then he said: “I have not spoken to my granddaughter—I waited to see Dan Treffry.” He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on his shoulders. He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out of order, he had not taken his clothes off, I think. He isn't a man whom you can pity. I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the matter at all. When I told him where we had been, he said: “It was good of you to take this trouble. That you should have had to! But since such things have come to pass—” He made a gesture full of horror. He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was struggling against a mortal hurt. Presently he asked: “You saw him, you say? He admitted this marriage? Did he give an explanation?” I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear. Before this old man, with his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a brief for Zachary, and must try to do him justice. “Let me understand,” he said at last. “He stole her, you say, to make sure; and deserts her within a fortnight.” “He says he meant to take her—” “Do you believe that?” Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window. How long she had been there I don't know. “Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?” she cried out. I could only nod. “Did you hear him your own self?” “Yes.” She stamped her foot. “But he promised! He promised!” John Ford went towards her. “Don't touch me, grandfather! I hate every one! Let him do what he likes, I don't care.” John Ford's face turned quite grey. “Pasiance,” he said, “did you want to leave me so much?” She looked straight at us, and said sharply: “What's the good of telling stories. I can't help its hurting you.” “What did you think you would find away from here?” She laughed. “Find? I don't know—nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway. Now I suppose you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like men!” “Silence!” said John Ford; “I will make him take you.” “You shan't!” she cried; “I won't let you. He's free to do as he likes. He's free—I tell you all, everybody—free!”