long journeys up and down England to buy grain--Abel Fletcher having
added to his tanning business the flour-mill hard by, whose lazy
whirr was so familiar to John and me in our boyhood. But of these
journeys my father never spoke; indeed, he rarely mentioned John at
all. However he might employ and even trust him in business
relations, I knew that in every other way he was inexorable.

And John Halifax was as inexorable as he. No under-hand or
clandestine friendship would he admit--no, not even for my sake. I
knew quite well, that until he could walk in openly, honourably,
proudly, he never would re-enter my father's doors. Twice only he
had written to me--on my two birthdays--my father himself giving me
in silence the unsealed letters. They told me what I already was
sure of--that I held, and always should hold, my steadfast place in
his friendship. Nothing more.

One other fact I noticed: that a little lad, afterward discovered to
be Jem Watkins, to whom had fallen the hard-working lot of the lost
Bill, had somehow crept into our household as errand-boy, or
gardener's boy; and being "cute," and a "scholard," was greatly
patronized by Jael. I noticed, too, that the said Jem, whenever he
came in my way, in house or garden, was the most capital "little
foot-page" that ever invalid had; knowing intuitively all my needs,
and serving me with an unfailing devotion, which quite surprised and
puzzled me at the time. It did not afterwards.

Summer was passing. People began to watch with anxious looks the
thin harvest-fields--as Jael often told me, when she came home from
her afternoon walks. "It was piteous to see them," she said; "only
July, and the quartern loaf nearly three shillings, and meal four