osition, and urged it upon all his hearers; but in the moment of doing
so a point that old Hilbrook had made in their talk suddenly presented
itself. He experienced inwardly such a collapse that he could not be
sure he had spoken, and he repeated his declaration in a voice of such
harsh defiance that he could scarcely afterwards bring himself down to
the meek level of the closing prayer.

As they walked home together, his wife asked, "Why did you repeat
yourself in that passage, Clarence, and why did you lift your voice so?
It sounded like contradicting some one. I hope you were not thinking of
anything that wretched old man said?"

With the mystical sympathy by which the wife divines what is in her
husband's mind she had touched the truth, and he could not deny it.
"Yes, yes, I was," he owned in a sort of anguish, and she said:--

"Well, then, I wish he wouldn't come about any more. He has perfectly
obsessed you. I could see that the last two Sundays you were preaching
right at him." He had vainly hoped she had not noticed this, though he
had not concealed from her that his talk with Hilbrook had suggested his
theme. "What are you going to do about him?" she pursued relentlessly.

"I don't know,--I don't know, indeed," said Ewbert; and perhaps because
he did not know, he felt that he must do something, that he must at
least not leave him to himself. He hoped that Hilbrook would come to
him, and so put him under the necessity of doing something; but Hilbrook
did not come, and after waiting a fortnight Ewbert went to him, as was
his duty.

VII.

The spring had advanced so far that there were now days when it was
pleasant to be out in the soft warmth of the afternoons. The day when
Ewbert climbed to the Hilbrook homestead it was even a little hot, and
he came up to the dooryard mopping his forehead with his handkerchief,
and glad of the southwestern breeze which he caught at this point over
the shoulder of the hill. He had expected to go round to the side door
of the house, where he had parted with Hilbrook on his former visit; but
he stopped on seeing the old man at his front door, where he was looking
vaguely at a mass of Spanish willow fallen dishevelled beside it, as if
he had some thought of lifting its tangled spray. The sun shone on his
bare head, and struck silvery gleams from his close-cropped white hair;
there was something uncommon in his air, though his dress was plain and
old-fashioned; and Ewbert wis