g up
with the setting sun. Together they walked, together they looked;
looking at the same things and with the same human eyes; even as they
had walked, and looked, and lived together for years, but with a world
dividing their hearts; and what was ever to unite them?

Even then, as they moved along, she murmured half aloud, half to
herself, thinking of the anxiety that had passed away: "Thou visitest
the earth, and blessest it; thou makest it very plenteous."

To which he answered, if answer it may be called, "Why are you always
so gloomy? Why should Scripture be quoted about such common things?"

And she looked in his face and smiled, but did not speak; and he
could not read the smile, for the life of her heart was as hidden to
him as the life of the corn blades in the field.

And so they went home together, no more being said by either; for, as
she turned round, the sight of the setting sun and of the young
freshly growing wheat blades brought tears into her eyes.

_She_ might never see the harvest upon earth again; for her that other
was at hand, whereof the reapers were to be angels.

And when she opened her Bible that night she wrote on the flyleaf the
text she had quoted to her husband, and after the text the date of the
day, and after the date the words, "Bless me, even me also, oh, my
Father, that I may bring forth fruit with patience!"

Very peaceful were the next few weeks that followed, for all nature
seemed to rejoice in the weather, and the corn blades shot up till
they were nearly two feet high, and about them the Master of the
Harvest had no complaints to make.

But at the end of that time, behold, the earth began to be hard and
dry again, for once more rain was wanted; and by degrees the growing
plants failed for want of moisture and nourishment, and lost power and
colour, and became weak and yellow in hue. And once more the
husbandmen began to fear and tremble, and once more the brow of the
Master of the Harvest was over-clouded with angry apprehension.

And as the man got more and more anxious about the fate of his crops,
he grew more and more irritable and distrustful, and railed as before,
only louder now, against the heavens because there was no rain;
against the earth because it lacked moisture; against the corn plants
because they had waxed feeble.

Nay, once, when his sick wife reproved him gently, praying him to
remember how his fears had been turned to joy before, he reproached
her