‘A striking idea!’ I exclaimed.

‘Your father’s,’ replied Wilderspin, in a tone of such reverence that one might have imagined my father’s spectre stood before him.  ’It symbolises that base Darwinian cosmogony which Carlyle spits at, and the great and good John Ruskin scorns.  But this design is only the predella beneath the picture “Faith and Love.”  Now look at the picture itself, Mr. Aylwin,’ he continued, as though it were upon an easel before me.  ’You are at Sais no longer:  you are now, as the architecture around you shows, in a Greek city by the sea.  In the light of innumerable lamps, torches, and wax tapers, a procession is moving through the streets.  You see Isis, as Pelagia, advancing between two ranks, one of joyous maidens in snow-white garments, adorned with wreaths, and scattering from their bosoms all kinds of dewy flowers; the other of youths, playing upon pipes and flutes, mixed with men with shaven shining crowns, playing upon sistra of brass, silver, and gold.  Isis wears a Dorian tunic, fastened on her breast by a tasselled knot,—­an azure-coloured tunic bordered with silver stars,—­and an upper garment of the colour of the moon at moonrise.  Her head is crowned with a chaplet of sea-flowers, and round her throat is a necklace of seaweeds, wet still with sea-water, and shimmering with all the shifting hues of the sea.  On either side of her stand the awakened angels, uplifting from her face a veil whose folds flow soft as water over her shoulders and over the wings of Faith and Love.  A symbol of the true cosmogony which Philip Aylwin gave to the world!’

‘Why, that’s esackly like the wreath o’ seaweeds as poor Winnie Wynne used to make,’ said Rhona Boswell.

‘The photograph of Raxton Fair!’ I cried.  ’Frank and Winnie, and little Bob Milford, and the seaweeds!’ The terrible past came upon my soul like an avalanche, and I leapt up and walked frantically towards my own waggon.  The picture, which was nothing but an idealisation of the vignette upon the title-page of my father’s book—­the vignette taken from the photograph of Winnie, my brother Frank, and one of my fisher-boy playmates—­brought back upon me—­all!

Sinfi came to me.

‘What is it, brother?’ said she.

‘Sinfi,’ I cried, ’what was that saying of your mother’s about fathers and children?’

’My poor mammy’s daddy, when she wur a little chavi, beat her so cruel that she was a ailin’ woman all her life, and she used to say, “For good or for ill, you must dig deep to bury your daddy."’

I went back and resumed my seat by Wilderspin’s side, while Sinfi returned to Cyril.

Wilderspin evidently thought that I had been overcome by the marvellous power of his description, and went on as though there had been no interruption.

‘Isis,’ said he,’ stands before you; Isis, not matronly and stern as the mother of Horus, nor as the Isis of the licentious orgies; but (as Philip Aylwin says) “Isis, the maiden, gazing around her, with pure but mystic eyes."’