dog standing before him and watching his
face, uttered an uneasy whine as he noted that question addressed to
the clouds: at intervals during the afternoon he had been asking his
question also. Then those live coals in the rind of the stump and the
danger of sparks blown to the hemp herds or brake, or fence farther
away: David walked over and stamped them out. As he returned, he
fondled the dog's head in his big, roughened hand.

"Captain," he said, "are you hungry?"

All at once he was attracted by a spectacle and forgot everything else.
For as he stood there beside his bale of hemp in the dead fields, his
throat and eyes filled with dust, the dust all over him, low on the
dark red horizon there had formed itself the solemn picture of a winter
sunset. Amid the gathering darkness the workman remained gazing toward
that great light--into the stillness of it--the loneliness--the eternal
peace. On his rugged face an answering light was kindled, the glory of
a spiritual passion, the flame of immortal things alive in his soul.
More akin to him seemed that beacon fire of the sky--more nearly his
real pathway home appeared that distant road and gateway to the
Infinite--than the flickering, near house-taper in the valley below.
Once before, on the most memorable day of his life, David had beheld a
winter sunset like that; but then across the roofs of a town--roofs
half white, half brown with melting snow, and with lengthening icicles
dripping in the twilight.

Suddenly, as if to shut out troubled thoughts, he stooped and, throwing
his big, long arms about the hemp, lifted it to his shoulder. "Come,
Captain," he called to his companion, and stalked heavily away. As he
went, he began to hum an ancient, sturdy hymn:--

"How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word.
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine."

He had once been used to love those words and to feel the rocklike
basis of them as fixed unshakably beneath the rolling sea of the music;
now he sang the melody only. A little later, as though he had no right
to indulge himself even in this, it died on the air; and only the noise
of his thick, stiffened boots could have been heard crushing the frozen
stubble, as he went staggering under his load toward the barn.

XI

When he reached the worm fence of the hemp field, he threw his load
from his shoulder