On the next day his father came to him alone and plied him with entreaties, but he was as obdurate as before.

He would have her; nothing should prevent him.

He cocked his hat and walked out of the lodge-gate, as his father, quite beaten by the young man's obstinacy, with haggard face and tearful eyes, went his own way into town.

He was not very angry himself: in the course of their talk overnight the boy had spoken bravely and honestly, and Newcome could remember how, in his own early life, he too had courted and loved a young lass.

It was Mrs.Newcome the father was afraid of.