his little canopy to protect them a trifle from the sun and rain,
slowly and in full view of the purple Cornish sea, sawing the stone for
hours together: the water dripped slowly on the saw from a little can
above to keep the steel cool, and occasionally they interchanged a word
or two--always on terms of perfect equality, although David took wages
weekly and Michael paid them. Michael was now a man of about five and
forty. He had married young and had two children, of whom the eldest was
a youth just one and twenty. Michael was called by his enemies
Antinomian. He was fervently religious, upright, temperate, but given
somewhat to moodiness and passion. He was singularly shy of talking
about his own troubles, of which he had more than his share at home, but
often strange clouds cast shadows upon him, and the reasons he gave for
the change observable in him were curiously incompetent to explain such
results. David, who had watched him from the other end of the saw for
twenty years, knew perfectly what these attacks of melancholy or wrath
meant, and that, though their assigned cause lay in the block before them
or the weather, the real cause was indoors. His trouble was made worse,
because he could not understand why he received no relief, although he
had so often laid himself open before the Lord, and wrestled for help in
prayer. In his younger days he had been subject to great temptation.
One night he had nearly fallen, but an Invisible Power seized him. "It
was no more I," he said, "than if somebody had come and laid hold of me
by the scruff of my neck," and he was forced away in terror upstairs to
his bedroom, where he went on his knees in agony, and the Devil left him,
and he became calm and pure. But no such efficient help was given him in
the trial of his life. He knew in his better moments, that the refusal
of grace was the Lord's own doing, and he supposed that it was due to His
love and desire to try him; but upon this assurance he could not
continually rest. It slipped away from under him, and at times he felt
himself to be no stronger than the merest man of the world.

His case was very simple and very common--the simplest, commonest case in
life. He married, as we have said, when he was young, before he knew
what he was doing, and after he had been married twelvemonths, he found
he did not care for his wife. When they became engaged, he was in the
pride of youth, but curbed by his religion. He m