t he told me this
noon. Abby Daggett seems to think I made it up out of whole cloth.
Don't deny it, Abby. You know very well you said.... I s'pose of
course he's told you, Mrs. Black."

"Mr. Elliot has gone out," said Mrs. Black rather coldly.

"Where's he gone?" demanded Lois.

Mrs. Black was being devoured with curiosity; still she felt vaguely
repelled.

"Ladies," she said, her air of reserve deepening. "I don't know what
you are talking about, but Mr. Elliot didn't eat any dinner, and he
is either sick or troubled in his mind."

"There! Now you c'n all see from that!" triumphed Lois Daggett.

Mrs. Deacon Whittle and Mrs. Judge Fulsom gazed incredulously at Mrs.
Solomon Black, then at one another.

Abby Daggett, the soft round of her beautiful, kind face flushed and
tremulous, murmured: "Poor man--poor man!"

Mrs. Solomon Black with a masterly gesture headed the women toward
her parlor, where a fire was burning in a splendidly nickeled stove
full five feet high.

"Now," said she; "we'll talk this over, whatever it is."

Chapter XXII

A mile from town, where the angry wind could be seen at work tearing
the purple rainclouds into rags and tatters, through which the hidden
sun shot long rays of pale splendor, Wesley Elliot was walking
rapidly, his head bent, his eyes fixed and absent.

He had just emerged from one of those crucial experiences of life,
which, more than the turning of the earth upon its axis, serve to age
a human being. For perhaps the first time in the brief span of his
remembrance, he had scrutinized himself in the pitiless light of an
intelligence higher than his own everyday consciousness; and the
sight of that meaner self, striving to run to cover, had not been
pleasant. Just why his late interview with Andrew Bolton should have
precipitated this event, he could not possibly have explained to any
one--and least of all to himself. He had begun, logically enough,
with an illuminating review of the motives which led him into the
ministry; they were a sorry lot, on the whole; but his subsequent
ambitions appeared even worse. For the first time, he perceived his
own consummate selfishness set over against the shining renunciations
of his mother. Then, step by step, he followed his career in
Brookville: his smug satisfaction in his own good looks; his shallow
pride and vanity over the vapid insincerities he had perpetrated
Sunday after Sunday in the shabby pulpit of the Brookville c