afresh.

There could be no longer any doubt that Ralph should know what had
already happened and what further was threatened. Yet who was to tell
him, and how was he to be told? It was useless to approach Willy in
his present determination rather to suffer eviction than to do Ralph
the injury of leading, or seeming to lead, to his apprehension.

"That was a noble purpose, but it was wrong," thought Rotha, and it
never occurred to her to make terms with a mistake. "It was a noble
purpose," she thought again; and when the memory of her own personal
grief crept up once more, she suppressed it with the reflection,
"Willy was sore tried, poor lad."

Who was to tell Ralph, and how was he to be told? Who knew where he
had gone, or, knowing this, could go in search of him? Would that she
herself had been born a man; then she would have travelled the kingdom
over, but she would have found him. She was only a woman, however, and
her duty lay here--here in the little circle with Ralph's mother, and
in his house and his brother's. Who could go in search of Ralph?

At this moment of doubt, Sim walked into the courtyard of the
homestead. He had not been seen since the day of the parson's visit,
but, without giving sign of any consciousness that he had been away,
he now took up a spade and began to remove a drift of sleet that had
fallen during the previous night. Rotha's eyes brightened, and she
hastened to the door and hailed him.

"Father," she said, when Sim had followed her into the house, "you
made a great journey for Ralph awhile ago; could you make another