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.