Now the main feature of the arrival of the Rexford family in Chellaston was that they brought their own carriage with them. It was an old, heavy carriage, for it had come into Captain Rexford's possession in the first place by inheritance, and it was now a great many years since he had possessed horses to draw it. From its long and ignominious retreat in an outhouse it had lately emerged to be varnished and furbished anew, in order to make the handsomer appearance in the new country. It had been one of the considerations which had reconciled Mrs. Rexford to emigration, that on a farm this carriage could be used with little extra expense.

Principal Trenholme had come to the station, which was a little way from the village, in a smart gig of his own. According to Captain Rexford's instructions, he had sent to the station a pair of horses, to be harnessed to the aforesaid carriage, which had been carefully brought on the same train with its owners. He had also sent of his own accord a comfortable waggon behind the horses, and he straightway urged that the family should repair in this at once to their new home, and leave the carriage to be set upon its wheels at leisure. As he gave this advice he eyed the wheelless coach with a curiosity and disfavour which was almost apparent through his studious politeness.

His arguments, however, and Captain Rexford's, who agreed with him, were of no avail. Mrs. Rexford, partly from sentiment, partly from a certain pathetic vanity, had set her heart on driving to the new home in the old carriage. Captain Rexford's eldest son had helped to get the vehicle off the train, and was now working steadily with one of the station hands to get it upon its wheels. It was assuredly such a carriage as that bit of Canadian road had never seen before. The station loiterers, sometimes helping in its arrangement, sometimes merely looking on, gazed at it with unwavering attention. Robert Trenholme gazed at it also, and at last felt obliged to give some more distinct warning of difficulties he foresaw.

"We have native horses," he said, with a good-humoured smile that leaped out of his eyes before it parted his lips; "we have horses, and we have ponies, and I am afraid that a pair of the one would be as serviceable in the long run as a pair of the other in drawing it on these roads. Are you getting out carriage-horses from England, Captain Rexford?"

The gentleman addressed continued to set the cushions in their places, but in a minute he went back into the station, where by a stove he found his wife and Sophia warming themselves, the smallest children, and a pot of carriage oil.

"You know, my dears, I never felt quite clear in my own mind that it was wise of us to bring the carriage." He held his hands to the warmth as he spoke. "Mr. Trenholme, I find, seems to think it heavy for these roads."

His wife heard him quite cheerfully. "In weather like this nothing could be more desirable," said she, "than to have one's own comfortably cushioned carriage; and besides, I have always told you we owe it to our children to show the people here that, whatever misfortunes we have had, we have been people of consequence." She added after a moment in conclusion: "Harold has brought the best grease for the wheels."

She had her way therefore, and in course of time the ladies, and as many of the children as could be crowded into the carriage, thus commenced the last stage of their journey. The others were driven on by Trenholme. As for the little boys, "a good run behind," their mother said, was just what they needed to warm them up.

They began running behind, but soon ran in front, which rather confused Mrs. Rexford's ideas of order, but still the carriage lumbered on.



CHAPTER XII.

Captain Rexford had no fortune with his second wife; and their children numbered seven daughters and three sons. It was natural that the expenses of so large a family should have proved too much for a slender income in an English town where a certain style of living had been deemed a necessity. When, further, a mercantile disaster had swept away the larger part of this income, the anxious parents had felt that there was nothing left for their children but a choice between degrading dependence on the bounty of others and emigration. From the new start in life which the latter course would give they had large hopes. Accordingly, they gathered together all that they had, and, with a loan from a richer relative, purchased a house and farm in a locality where they were told their children would not wholly lack educational opportunities or society. This move of theirs was heroic, but whether wise or unwise remained to be proved by the result of indefinite years. The extent of their wealth was now this new property, an income which, in proportion to their needs, was a mere pittance, and the debt to the richer relative.

The men who came to call on their new neighbour, and congratulate him on his choice of a farm, did not know how small was the income nor how big the debt, yet even they shook their heads dubiously as they thought of their own difficulties, and remarked to each other that such a large family was certainly a great responsibility.

"I wonder," said one to another, "if Rexford had an idea in coming here that he would marry his daughters easily. It's a natural thing, you know, when one hears of the flower of British youth leaving England for the Colonies, to imagine that, in a place like this, girls would be at a premium. I did. When we came out I said to my wife that when our little girls grew up they might pick and choose for themselves from among a dozen suitors, but—well, this isn't just the locality for that, is it?"

Both men laughed a little. They knew that, however difficult it might be to find the true explanation of the fact, the fact remained that there were no young men in Chellaston, that boys who grew up there went as inevitably elsewhere to make their fortunes as they would have done from an English country town.

Among the ladies who came to see Mrs. Rexford and count her children, the feeling concerning her was more nearly allied to kindly commiseration than she would at all have liked had she known it. They said that Captain Rexford might succeed if his wife and daughters—Each would complete the conditional clause in her own way, but it was clear to the minds of all that the success of the Rexford farm would depend to a great extent upon the economy and good management practised in the house.

Now the Rexfords, man, woman, and child, had come with brave hearts, intending to work and to economise; yet they found what was actually required of them different from all that their fancy had pictured; and their courage, not being obliged to face those dangers to which they had adjusted it, and being forced to face much to which it was not adjusted, suffered shock, and took a little time to rally into moderate animation.

At the end of their weary journey they had found themselves in a large wooden house, not new by any means, or smart in any of its appointments; and, as convenience is very much a matter of custom, it appeared to them inconvenient—a house in which room was set against room without vestige of lobby or passage-way, and in which there were almost as many doors to the outside as there were windows. They had bought it and its furniture as a mere adjunct to a farm which they had chosen with more care, and when they inspected it for the first time their hearts sank somewhat within them. Captain Rexford, with impressive sadness, remarked to his wife that there was a greater lack of varnish and upholstery and of traces of the turning lathe than he could have supposed possible in—"furniture." But his wife had bustled away before he had quite finished his speech. Whatever she might feel, she at least expressed no discouragement. Torture does not draw from a brave woman expressions of dismay.

That which gave both Mrs. Rexford and Sophia much perplexity in the first day or two of the new life was that the girl Eliza seemed to them to prove wholly incompetent. She moved in a dazed and weary fashion which was quite inconsistent with the intelligence and capacity occasionally displayed in her remarks; and had they in the first three days been able to hear of another servant, Mrs. Rexford would have abruptly cancelled her agreement with Eliza. At the end of that time, however, when there came a day on which Mrs. Rexford and Sophia were both too exhausted by unpacking and housework to take their ordinary share of responsibility, Eliza suddenly seemed to awake and shake herself into thought and action. She cleared the house of the litter of packing-cases, set their contents in order, and showed her knowledge of the mysteries of the kitchen in a manner which fed the family and sent them to bed more comfortably than since their arrival. From that day Eliza became more cheerful; and she not only did her own work, but often aided others in theirs, and set the household right in all its various efforts towards becoming a model Canadian home. If the ladies had not had quite so much to learn, or if the three little children had not been quite so helpless, Eliza's work would have appeared more effective. As it was, the days passed on, and no tragedy occurred.

It was a great relief to Captain and Mrs. Rexford in those days to turn to Principal Trenholme for society and advice. He was their nearest neighbour, and had easy opportunity for being as friendly and kind as he evidently desired to be. Captain Rexford pronounced him a fine fellow and a perfect gentleman. Captain Rexford had great natural courtesy of disposition.

"I suppose, Principal Trenholme," said he blandly, as he entertained his visitor one day in the one family sitting-room, "I suppose that you are related to the Trenholmes of——?"

Trenholme was playing with one of the little ones who stood between his knees. He did not instantly answer—indeed, Captain Rexford's manner was so deliberate that it left room for pauses. Sophia, in cloak and fur bonnet, was standing by the window, ready to take the children for their airing. Trenholme found time to look up from his tiny playmate and steal a glance at her handsome profile as she gazed, with thoughtful, abstracted air, out upon the snow. "Not a very near connection, Captain Rexford," was his reply; and it was given with that frank smile which always leaped first to his eyes before it showed itself about his mouth.

It would have been impossible for a much closer observer than Captain Rexford to have told on which word of this small sentence the emphasis had been given, or whether the smile meant that Principal Trenholme could have proved his relationship had he chosen, or that he laughed at the notion of there being any relationship at all. Captain Rexford accordingly interpreted it just as suited his inclination, and mentioned to another neighbour in the course of a week that his friend, the Principal of the College, was a distant relative, by a younger branch probably, of the Trenholmes of—, etc. etc., an item of news of which the whole town took account sooner or later.

To Mrs. Rexford Trenholme was chiefly useful as a person of whom she could ask questions, and she wildly asked his advice on every possible subject. On account of Captain Rexford's friendly approval, and his value to Mrs. Rexford as a sort of guide to useful knowledge on the subject of Canada in general and Chellaston in particular, Robert Trenholme soon became intimate, in easy Canadian fashion, with the newcomers; that is, with the heads of the household, with the romping children and the pretty babies. The young girls were not sufficiently forward in social arts to speak much to a visitor, and with Sophia he did not feel at all on a sure footing.

After this little conversation with Captain Rexford about his relatives, and when Sophia had received the other children from the hands of Eliza and repaired with them to the house door, Trenholme also took leave, and rose to accompany her as far as the gate.

Sophia shivered a little when she stepped out upon the narrow wooden gallery in front of the door.

The Rexford house was not situated in the midst of the farm, but between the main road that ran out of the village and the river that here lay for some distance parallel with the road. On the next lot of land stood an empty house in the centre of a large deserted garden; and on the other side of the road, about a quarter of a mile off, stood the college buildings, which were plainly to be seen over flat fields and low log fences. Beyond the college grounds were woods and pastures, and beyond again rose Chellaston Mountain. This view was what Sophia and Trenholme looked upon as they stood on the verandah; and all that they saw—field, road, roof, tree, and hill—was covered with sparkling snow. It was a week since the snow came, and Sophia still shivered a little whenever she looked at it.

"I am sorry to see you do not look upon this scene as if it rejoiced your heart," he said. "When you know it better, you will, I hope, love it as I do. It is a glorious climate, Miss Rexford; it is a glorious country. The depressions and fears that grow up with one's life in the Old World fall away from one in this wonderful air, with the stimulus of a new world and a strong young nation all around. This snow is not cold; it is warm. In this garden of yours it is just now acting as a blanket for the germs of flowers that could not live through an English winter, but will live here, and next summer will astonish you with their richness. Nor is it cold for you; it is dry as dust; you can walk over it in moccasins, and not be damp: and it has covered away all the decay of autumn, conserving for you in the air such pure oxygen that it will be like new life in your veins, causing you to laugh at the frost."

"I have not your enthusiasm," she replied. Together they led the unsteady feet of the little ones down the crisp snow path which Harold's industrious shovel had made.

Trenholme spoke briefly of the work he was trying to do in his school. A clergyman has social licence to be serious which is not accorded to other men. Wherefore he spoke as a clergyman might speak to a friend, saying, in general terms, how steep is the ascent when, among mundane affairs, human beings try to tread only where the angels of the higher life may lead.

Sophia assented, feeling a little sharp because it seemed to her that he was taking up the thread of his acquaintance with her just where it had formerly parted when she had thrown before him the gauntlet of such high resolves and heavenly aims as young girls can easily talk about when they know as yet nothing of their fulfilment. Whether or not Sophia knew more of their fulfilment since then, she had, at least, learned a more humble reverence for the very thought of such struggles, and she was quite ready to believe that the man to whom she had once called to come onward had by this time far outstripped her in the race. She was ready for this belief; but she had not accepted it, because, as yet confused and excited by all that was new, she had formed no conclusion whatever with regard to Trenholme. It had puzzled her somewhat from the outset to find him such a model of elegance in the matter of clothes and manners. She had, somehow, fancied that he would have a long beard and wear an old coat. Instead of that, his usual manner of accosting her reminded her more of those fashion plates in which one sees tailors' blocks taking off their hats to one another. She did not think this was to his disadvantage; she did not, as yet, think distinctly on the matter at all. She certainly had no time to deliberate during this particular conversation, for her companion, having only a few minutes to utilise, was in a talkative humour. Having spoken of his own work, and made the more general observations on the difficulties of what is commonly called the "narrow road," in a quiet, honest way, he said something more personal.

"I have always felt, Miss Rexford, that it would be a pleasure to me to see you again, because of the strength and courage which you managed to infuse into my youthful aspirations; but now that I have seen you, will you permit me to say that you have been quite unknowingly a help to me again? A week ago I was half-disheartened of my life because of the apparent sordidness of its daily duties, and now that I have seen you giving your life to perform small and unassuming services for others, my own duties have appeared more sacred. I can't tell you how much I admire your unselfish devotion to these children. Don't think me rude because I say it. I often think we are shabby to one another because, in the strife, we do not frankly say when we are helped by seeing the brave fight that some one else is making."

They had stopped by the gate, for he was going one way and she and the little ones another. Two strong young firs, with snow upon their shelving branches, formed gateposts. The long broad road was white as their footpath had been.

Sophia answered: "There is no virtue in what I do, for, had I the choice, I certainly should not be their nursemaid."

"Do you know," he said, "I think when we see life in its reality, instead of in its seeming, we shall find that the greatest deeds have been done just because their doers believe that they could not do otherwise."

"I don't see that. If circumstances shut us up to doing certain things, there is no virtue in doing them. There may be a little virtue in not repining at our fate, but not much."

He did not answer for a minute, but broke the curl of a little snowdrift gently with his stick. Because he did not answer or say good-bye, Sophia tarried for a moment and then looked up at him.

"Miss Rexford," he replied, "the voice of circumstances says to us just what we interpret it to say. It is in the needs must of a high nature that true nobility lies."



CHAPTER XIII.

It is upon the anniversary of feasts that a family, if despondent at all, feels most despondent. So it fell out that at Christmas-time the homesickness which hitherto had found its antidote in novelty and surprise now attacked the Rexford household. The girls wept a good deal. Sophia chid them for it sharply. Captain Rexford carried a solemn face. The little boys were in worse pickles of mischief than was ordinary. Even Mrs. Rexford was caught once or twice, in odd corners, hastily wiping away furtive tears.

This general despondency seemed to reach a climax one afternoon some days before the end of the year. Without, the wind was blowing and snow was descending; inside, the housework dragged monotonously. The only lively people in the house were the little children. They were playing quite riotously in an upper room, under the care of the Canadian girl, Eliza; but their shouts only elicited sighs from Mrs. Rexford's elder daughters, who were helping her to wash the dinner dishes in the kitchen.

These two elder daughters had, since childhood, always been dressed, so far as convenient, the one in blue, the other in red, and were nicknamed accordingly. Their mother thought it gave them individuality which they otherwise lacked. The red frock and the blue were anything but gay just now, for they were splashed and dusty, and the pretty faces above them showed a decided disposition to pout and frown, even to shed tears.

The kitchen was a long, low room. The unpainted wood of floor, walls, and ceiling was darkened somewhat by time. Two square, four-paned windows were as yet uncurtained, except that Nature, with the kindness of a fairy helper, had supplied the lack of deft fingers and veiled the glass with such devices of the frost as resembled miniature landscapes of distant alp and nearer minaret. The large, square cooking-stove smoked a little. Between the stove and the other door stood the table, which held the dishes at which worked the neat, quick mother and her rather untidy and idle daughters.

"Really, Blue and Red!" The words were jerked out to conceal a sigh which had risen involuntarily. "This is disgraceful."

Her sharp brown eyes fell on the pile of dishes she had washed, which the two girls, who were both drying them, failed to diminish as fast as she increased it.

"Our cloths are wet," said Blue, looking round the ceiling vaguely, as if a dry dish-towel might be lying somewhere on a rafter.

"I declare—" the mother began, tapping her foot. But what she was going to declare was never known, for just then a knock at the outer door diverted their attention.

However commonplace may be the moment after a door is opened, the moment before the opening is apt to be full of interest, for one can never know but that some cause of delightful excitement is on the other side.

It was Blue who opened the door. She did not at first open it very wide, for she had learned by experience how much icy air could rush in, and the other two, watching from behind, saw her answering some salutation with dubious politeness. Then, after a moment, they saw her open it more widely, and with a shy but hospitable inclination of the pretty head—"Will you walk in?" said Blue.

The young man who immediately entered had a very smart appearance to eyes which had grown accustomed to the working garb of father and brother. He was, moreover, handsome to a degree that is not ordinary. The curly hair from which he had lifted his fur cap was black and glossy as a blackbird's plumage, and the moustache, which did not cover the full red lips, matched the hair, save that it seemed of finer and softer material. His brown eyes had the glow of health and good spirits in them.

"Dear me!" Mrs. Rexford gave this involuntary exclamation of surprise; then she turned inquiringly to the visitor. It was not in her nature to regard him with an unfriendly eye; and as for Blue and Red, a spot of warm colour had come into each of their sorrowful cheeks. They were too well bred to look at each other or stare at the stranger, but there was a flutter of pleased interest about the muscles of their rosy lips that needed no expressive glances to interpret it.

To be sure, the next few minutes' talk rather rubbed the bloom off their pleasure, as one rubs beauty off a plum by handling; but the plum is still sweet; and the pleasure was still there, being composed purely of the excitement of meeting a young human creature apparently so akin to themselves, but different with that mysterious difference which nature sets between masculine and feminine attributes of mind and heart.

The young man was an American. Any one experienced in American life would have observed that the youth was a wanderer, his tricks of speech and behaviour savouring, not of one locality, but of many. His accent and manner showed it. He was very mannerly. He stated, without loss of time, that, hearing that they had lately come to the country and had some rooms in their house which they did not use, he had taken the liberty of calling to see if they could let him a couple of rooms. He was anxious, he said, to set up as a dentist, and had failed, so far, to find a suitable place.

The disappointment which Blue and Red experienced in finding that the handsome youth was a dentist by profession was made up for by the ecstasy of amusement it caused them to think of his desiring to set up his business in their house. They would almost have forgiven Fate if she had withdrawn her latest novelty as suddenly as she had sent him, because his departure would have enabled them to give vent to the mirth the suppression of which was, at that moment a pain almost as great as their girlish natures could bear.

Oh, no, Mrs. Rexford said, they had no rooms to let in the house.

The stranger muttered something under his breath, which to an acute ear might have sounded like "Oh, Jemima!" but he looked so very disconsolate they could not help being sorry for him as he immediately replied, soberly enough, "I am sorry. I can't think of any place else to go, ma'am. I'm real tired, for I've been walking this long time in the loose snow. Will you permit me to sit and rest for a time on the doorstep right outside here till I can think what I better do next?"

Blue fingered the back of a chair nervously.

"Take a chair by the stove and rest yourself," said Mrs. Rexford. She had a dignity about her in dealing with a visitor that was not often apparent in other circumstances. She added, "We have too lately been strangers ourselves to wish to turn any one weary from our door." Then, in whispered aside, "Dry your dishes, girls."

The dignity of bearing with which she spoke to him altered as she threw her head backward to give this last command.

"I thank you from my heart, madam." The young man bowed—that is, he made an angle of himself for a moment. He moved the chair to which she had motioned him, but did not sit down. "It is impossible for me to sit," said he, fervently, "while a lady stands."

The quaintness and novelty in his accent made them unable to test his manners by any known standard. For all they knew, the most cultured inhabitant of Boston, New York, or Washington might have behaved precisely in this way.

"Sit down, mamma," whispered Blue and Red, with praiseworthy consideration for their mother's fatigue; "we'll finish the dishes."

The girls perceived what, perhaps, the stranger had already perceived, that if their mother consented to sit there was a chance of a more equal conversation. And Mrs. Rexford sat down. Her mind had been unconsciously relieved from the exercise of great dignity by the fact that the stranger did not appear to notice her daughters, apparently assuming that they were only children.

"It is real kind of you, ma'am, to be so kind to me. I don't think any lady has seemed so kind to me since I saw my own mother last."

He looked pensively at the stove.

"Your mother lives in the United States, I suppose." He shook his head sadly. "In heaven now."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Rexford; and then in a minute, "I am glad to see that you feel her loss, I am sure." Here she got half off her chair to poke the damper of the stove. "There is no loss so great as the loss of a mother."

"No, and I always feel her loss most when I am tired and hungry; because, when I was a little chap, you know, it was always when I was tired and hungry that I went home and found her just sitting there, quite natural, waiting for me."

Blue and Red looked at the cupboard. They could not conceive how their mother could refrain from an offer of tea. But, as it was, she gave the young man a sharp glance and questioned him further. Where had he come from? When had he arrived?

He had come, he said, from the next station on the railway. He had been looking there, and in many other places, for an opening for his work, and for various reasons he had now decided that Chellaston was a more eligible place than any. He had come in the early morning, and had called on the doctor and on Principal Trenholme of the College. They had both agreed that there was an opening for a young dentist who would do his work well, charge low prices, and be content to live cheaply till the Tillage grew richer. "It's just what I want," he said. "I don't seem to care much about making money if I can live honestly among kind-hearted folks."

"But surely," cried Mrs. Rexford, "neither Dr. Nash nor Principal Trenholme suggested to you that Captain Rexford could give you rooms for—" She was going to say "pulling out teeth," but she omitted that.

The young man looked at her, evidently thinking of something else. "Would you consider it a liberty, ma'am, if I—" He stopped diffidently, for, seeing by his manner that he meditated immediate action of some sort, she looked at him so fiercely that her glance interrupted him for a moment, "if I were to stop the stove smoking?" He completed the sentence with great humility, evidently puzzled to know how he had excited her look of offence.

She gave another excited poke at the damper herself, and, having got her hand blacked, wiped it on her coarse grey apron. The diamond keeper above the wedding-ring looked oddly out of place, but not more so than the small, shapely hand that wore it. Seeing that she had done the stove no good, she sat back in her chair with her hands crossed upon her now dirty apron.

"You can do nothing with it. Before we came to Canada no one told us that the kitchen stoves invariably smoked. Had they done so I should have chosen another country. However, as I say to my children, we must make the best of it now. There's no use crying; there's no use lamenting. It only harasses their father."

The last words were said with a sharp glance of reproof at Blue and Red. This mother never forgot the bringing up of her children in any one's presence, but she readily forgot the presence of others in her remarks to her children.

"But you aren't making the best of it," said the visitor. With that he got up, carefully lifted an iron piece in the back of the stove, turned a key thus disclosed in the pipe, and so materially altered the mood of the fire that in a few moments it stopped smoking and crackled nicely.

"Did you ever, mamma!" cried the girls. A juggler's feat could not have entertained them more.

"If for a time, first off, you had someone in the house who had lived in this country, you'd get on first class," said the youth.

"But you know, my dears," Mrs. Rexford spoke to her daughters, forgetting the young man for a moment as before, "if I had not supposed that Eliza understood the stove I should have inquired of Principal Trenholme before now."

"May I enquire where you got your help?" asked the American. "If she was from this locality she certainly ought to have comprehended the stove."

"She is a native of the country."

"As I say," he went on, with some emphasis, "if she comes from hereabouts, or further west, she ought to have understood this sort of a stove; but, on the other hand, if she comes from the French district, where they use only the common box stove, she would not understand this kind."

He seemed to be absorbed entirely in the stove, and in the benefit to them of having a "help," as he called her, who understood it.

"I think she comes from the lumbering country somewhere near the St. Lawrence," said Mrs. Rexford, examining the key in the stove-pipe. She could not have said a moment before where Eliza had come from, but this phrase seemed to sum up neatly any remarks the girl had let fall about her father's home.

"That accounts for it! Will you be kind enough to let me see her? I could explain the mechanism of this stove to her in a few words; then you, ma'am, need have no further trouble."

She said she should be sorry to trouble him. If the key were all, she could explain it.

"Pardon me"—he bowed again—"it is not all. There are several inner dampers at the back here, which it is most important to keep free from soot. If I might only explain it to the help, she'd know once for all. I'd be real glad to do you that kindness."

Mrs. Rexford had various things to say. Her speeches were usually complex, composed of a great variety of short sentences. She asked her daughters if they thought Eliza would object to coming down. She said that Eliza was invaluable, but she did not always like to do as she was asked. She thought the girl had a high temper. She had no wish to rouse her temper; she had never seen anything of it; she didn't wish to. Perhaps Eliza would like to come down. Then she asked her daughters again if they thought Eliza would come pleasantly. Her remarks showed the track of her will as it veered round from refusal to assent, as bubbles in muddy water show the track of a diving insect. Finally, because the young man had a strong will, and was quite decided as to what he thought best, the girls were sent to fetch Eliza.

Blue and Red ran out of the kitchen. When they got into the next room they clasped one another and shook with silent laughter. As the door between the rooms did not shut tightly, they adjured one another, by dances and gestures, not to laugh loud. Blue danced round the table on her toes as a means of stifling her laughter. Then they both ran to the foot of the attic stair and gripped each other's arms very tight by way of explaining that the situation was desperate, and that one or other must control her voice sufficiently to call Eliza.

The dining-room they were in was built and furnished in the same style as the kitchen, save that here the wood was painted slate-colour and a clean rag carpet covered the floor. The upper staircase, very steep and dark, opened off it at the further end. All the light from a square, small-paned window fell sideways upon the faces of the girls as they stretched their heads towards the shadowed covert of the stairs.

And they could not, could not, speak, although they made gestures of despair at each other and mauled each other's poor little arms sadly in the endeavour to prove how hard they were trying to be sober.

If any one wants to know precisely what they were laughing at, the only way would be to become for a time one of two girls to whom all the world is a matter of mutual mirth except when it is a matter of mutual tears.

Although it seemed very long to them, it was, after all, only a minute before Blue called in trembling tones, "Eliza!"

"Eliza!" called Red.

"Eliza! Eliza!" they both called, and though there was that in their voices which made it perfectly apparent to the young man in the next room, that they were laughing, so grand was their composure compared with what it had been before, that they thought they had succeeded admirably.

But when a heavy foot was heard overhead and an answering voice, and it was necessary to explain to Eliza wherefore she was called, an audible laugh did escape, and then Blue and Red scampered upstairs and made the communication there.

It spoke much for the strength and calibre of character of the girl who had so lately come into this family that a few minutes later, when the three girls entered the kitchen, it was Eliza who walked first, with a bearing equal to that of the other two and a dignity far greater.

The young man, who had been fidgeting with the stove, looked up gravely to see them enter, as if anxious to give his lesson; but had any one looked closely it would have been seen that his acute gaze covered the foremost figure with an intensity of observation that was hardly called for if he took no other interest in her than as a transient pupil in the matter of stove dampers.

Perhaps any one might have looked with interest at her. She was evidently young, but there was that in her face that put years, or at least experience of years, between her and the pretty young things that followed her. She was largely made, and, carrying a dimpled child of two years upon her shoulder, she walked erect, as Southern women walk with their burdens on their heads. It detracted little that her gown was of the coarsest, and that her abundant red hair was tossed by the child's restless hands. Eliza, as she entered the kitchen, was, if not a beautiful girl, a girl on the eve of splendid womanhood; and the young man, perceiving this almost faltered in his gaze, perhaps also in the purpose he was pursuing. The words of the lesson he had ready seemed to be forgotten, although his outward composure did not fail him.

Eliza came near, the child upon her shoulder, looked at him and waited.

"Eliza will hear what you have to say," said Mrs. Rexford.

"Oh," said he, and then, whatever had been the cause of his momentary pause, he turned it off with the plea that he had not supposed this to be "the—young lady who—wished to learn about the stove."

She received what he had to say without much appreciation, remarking that, with the exception of the one key, she had known it before.

As for him, he took up his cap to go. "Good-day, ma'am," he said; "I'm obliged for your hospitality. Ladies, I beg leave now to retire." He made his bow elaborately, first to Mrs. Rexford, then in the direction of the girls.

"My card, ma'am," he said, presenting Mrs. Rexford with the thing he mentioned.

Then he went out.

On the card was printed, "Cyril P. Harkness, M.D.S."

It was growing so dark that Mrs. Rexford had to go to the window to read it. As she did so, the young man's shadow passed below the frosted pane as he made his way between snow-heaps to the main road.



CHAPTER XIV.

Next day Eliza went out with two of the little children. It was in the early afternoon, and the sun shone brightly. Eliza had an errand down the street, but every one knows that one does not progress very fast on an errand with a toddler of two years at one's side. Eliza sauntered, giving soothing answers to the little one's treble remarks, and only occasionally exerting herself to keep the liveliness of her older charge in check. Eliza liked the children and the sunshine and the road. Her saunter was not an undignified one, nor did she neglect her duty in any particular; but all the while there was an undercurrent of greater activity in her mind, and the under-thoughts were occupied wholly and entirely with herself and her own interests.

After walking in the open road for a little while she came under the great elm trees that held their leafless limbs in wide arch over the village street. Here a footpath was shovelled in the snow, on either side of the sleigh road. The sun was throwing down the graceful lines of elm twigs on path and snowdrift. The snow lawns in front of the village houses were pure and bright; little children played in them with tiny sledge and snow spade, often under the watchful eye of a mother who sat sewing behind the window pane. Now and then sleighs passed on the central road with a cheerful jingle of bells.

When Eliza, with the children, came to the centre of the village, it became necessary to cross the street. She was bound for the largest shop, that stood under part of the great hotel, and just here, opposite the hotel, quite a number of sleighs were passing. Eliza picked up the little one in her arms, and, taking the other child by the hand, essayed to cross. But one reckons without one's host in counting surely on the actions of children. Sturdy five-year-old baulked like a little horse, and would not come. Eliza coaxed in vain. A long line of draught-horses, dragging blue box-sleighs, came slowly up the road, each jingling a heavy belt of bells. Five-year-old was frightened and would not come. Eliza, without irritation, but at the same time without hesitation, took it by the waist under her left arm and started again. She got half across before the child seemed thoroughly to realise what was occurring, and then, with head and arms in front and little gaitered legs behind, it began to struggle so violently that the young woman, strong and composed as she was, was brought for a minute to a standstill.

Two men were watching her from the smoking-room of the hotel; the one an elderly man, the owner of the house, had his attention arrested by the calm force of character Eliza was displaying; the other, the young American dentist, saw in the incident an excuse for interference, and he rushed out now to the rescue, and gallantly carried the little naughty one safely to the right side of the road.

Eliza, recognising him, saw that he was looking at her with the pleasant air of an old acquaintance—one, in fact, who knew her so well that any formal greeting was unnecessary—not that she knew anything about greetings, or what might or might not be expected, but she had an indistinct sense that he was surprisingly friendly.

"How's the stove going?" then he asked. He escorted her into the shop, and superintended her little purchases in a good-natured, elder-brother fashion. That done, he carried the elder child across the road again, and Eliza went upon her way back down the long narrow pavement, with the children at her side.

She had shown nothing to the young man but composed appreciation of his conduct. She was, however, conscious that he would not have been so kind to any girl he happened to meet. "He admires me," thought Eliza to herself. For all that, she was not satisfied with the encounter. She felt that she had not played her part well; she had been too—had been too—she did not know what. She thought if she had held her head higher and shown herself less thankful—yes, there had been something amiss in her behaviour that ought to be corrected. She could not define what she had done, or ought to have done. How could she? An encounter of this sort was as new to her as Mrs. Rexford's sewing machine, which she had not yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was to be gained, she strove with it in no fear of failure.

She raised her head as she walked, and recast the interview just past in another form more suited to her vague ideal, and again in another. She had a sense of power within her, that sense which powerful natures have, without in the least knowing in what direction the power may go forth, or when they will be as powerless—as Samson shaven. She only felt the power and its accompanying impulses; she supposed that in all ways, at all times, it was hers to use.

In a day or two Cyril Harkness met Eliza in the street again, and took occasion to speak to her. This time she was much less obliging in her manner. She threw a trifle of indifference into her air, looking in front of her instead of at him, and made as if she wished to proceed. Had this interview terminated as easily as the other, she would have been able to look back upon it with complete satisfaction, as having been carried on, on her part, according to her best knowledge of befitting dignity; but, unfortunately for her, the young American was of an outspoken disposition, and utterly untrammelled by those instincts of conventionality which Eliza had, not by training, but by inheritance from her law-abiding and custom-loving Scotch ancestry.

"Say," said he, "are you mad at anything?"

He gained at least this much, that she instantly stared at him.

"If you aren't angry with me, why should you act crusty?" he urged. "You aren't half as pleasant as t'other day."

Eliza had not prepared herself for this free speaking, and her mind was one that moved slowly.

"I must take the children home," she said. "I'm not angry. I wasn't pleasant that I know of."

"You ought to be pleasant, any way; for I'm your best friend."

Eliza was not witty, and she really could not think of an answer to this astonishing assertion. Again she looked at him in simple surprise.

"Well, yes, I am; although you don't know it. There isn't man round Turriffs who has the least idea in the world where you are, for your friends left you asleep when they came out with the old gentleman; when I twigged how you got off I never told a word. Your father had been seen" (here he winked) "near Dalhousie, wandering round! But they won't find you unless I tell them, and I won't."

"Won't find me unless you tell them," repeated Eliza slowly, the utmost astonishment in her tone. "Who?"

So vague and great was the wonder in her voice that he brought his eyes to interrogate hers in sudden surprise. He saw only simple and strong interest on the face of a simple and strong country girl. He had expected a different response and a different expression.

He put his tongue in the side of his cheek with the air of an uncontrolled boy who has played a trump-card in vain. "Say," said he, "didn't you, though?"

"Didn't I?" said Eliza, and after a minute she said, "What?"

The young man looked at her and smiled. His smile suggested a cunning recognition that she was deceiving him by pretended dulness.

At this Eliza looked excessively offended, and, with her head aloft, began to push on the little sleigh with the baby in it.

"Beg your pardon, ma'am," he said with sudden humility, but with a certain lingering in his voice as if he could not relinquish his former idea as suddenly as he wished to appear to do. "I see I've made a mistake."

Eliza hesitated in her onward movement. "But what was it you were going to tell about me?" She spoke as if she had merely then remembered how the conversation began.

His recantation was now complete. "Nothing; oh, nothing. T'was just my fun, miss."

She surveyed him with earnest disapprobation.

"You're not a very sensible young man, I'm afraid."

She said this severely, and then, with great dignity, she went home.

The young man lingered for a minute or two by the snow piles in front of the hotel where they had been standing. Then he went into the hotel with the uncertain step that betokens an undecided mind. When he got to the window he looked out at her retreating figure—a white street with this grey-clad healthy-looking girl walking down it, and the little red box-sleigh with the baby in it which she pushed before her. He was quite alone, and he gave vent to an emphatic half-whisper to himself.

"If she did it, she's a magnificent deep one—a magnificent deep one." There was profound admiration in his voice.

That evening it was Mrs. Rexford who happened to wipe the tea-things while Eliza washed them.

"That young Mr. Harkness, the dentist—" began Eliza.

"Yes," said Mrs. Rexford, alert.

"Twice when I've been to the shop he's tried to make himself pleasant to me and the children. I don't suppose he means any harm, but he's not a sensible young man, I think."

"You're a very sensible girl, Eliza," said Mrs. Rexford, with quick vigour and without any sense of contrast.

"It doesn't matter to me," went on Eliza, "for I don't answer him more than I can help; but if he was to talk to the other girls when they go out, I suppose they'd know not to notice him too much."

Mrs. Rexford was one of those people who get accustomed to circumstances in the time that it takes others to begin to wonder at them. She often took for granted now that Eliza would consider her daughters as, entirely on a level with herself, but less sensible. It might not be wholly agreeable; neither, to Mrs. Rexford's mind, was it agreeable to have the earth covered with snow for four months of the year; but she had ceased wondering at that phenomenon a minute after she had first read of it in a book of travels, and all the ever-fresh marvel of its glossy brightness had, failed to bring fresh comment to her lips, or to make her mind more familiar with the idea. In the same way, she had accepted Eliza's position and character as a complex fact which, like the winter, had advantages and disadvantages. Mrs. Rexford put up with the latter, was thankful for the former, and wasted no more thoughts on the matter.

Eliza's last remark, however, was a subject for consideration, and with Mrs. Rexford consideration was speech.

"Dear me!" she said. "Well!" Then she took a few paces backward, dish-cloth and dish still in hand, till she brought herself opposite the next room door. The long kitchen was rather dark, as the plates were being washed by the light of one candle, but in the next room Captain Rexford and his family were gathered round a table upon which stood lamps giving plenty of light.

The mother addressed the family in general. "The dentist," said she, "talks to Eliza when she goes to the shop. Blue and Red! if he should speak to you, you must show the same sense Eliza did, and take not the slightest notice."

Sophia had asked what the dentist said to Eliza, and Mrs. Rexford had reproved the girls for laughing, while the head of the family prepared himself to answer in his kindly, leisurely, and important way.

"To 'take not the slightest notice' is, perhaps, requiring more of such young heads than might be possible. It would be difficult even for me to take no notice whatever of a young man who accosted me in a place like this. Severity, mild displeasure, or a determination not to speak, might be shown."

"If necessary," said Sophia; "but—"

"If necessary," the father corrected himself, emphasizing his words with a gentle tap of his fingers on the table. "I only mean if necessary, of course."

"People have such easy-going ways here," said Sophia. "Don't you think, mamma, a little ordinary discretion on the girls' part would be enough? Blue and Red have too much sense, I suppose, to treat him as an equal; but they can be polite."

Eliza, overhearing this, decided that she would never treat the young American as an equal, although she had no idea why she should not.

Let it not be supposed that Mrs. Rexford had idled over the dish she was wiping. The conversation was, in fact, carried on between the family in the bright sitting-room and an intermittent appearance of Mrs. Rexford at the door of the shady kitchen. Twice she had disappeared towards Eliza's table to get a fresh plate and come again, rubbing it.

"Ah, girls," she now cried, "Sophia is always giving you credit for more sense than I'm afraid you possess. No giggling, now, if this young fellow should happen to say 'good morning.' Just 'good morning' in return, and pass on—nothing more."

The father's leisurely speech again broke in and hushed the little babble.

"Certainly, my dear daughters, under such circumstances as your mother suggests; to look down modestly, and answer the young man's salutation with a little primness, and not to hesitate in your walk—that, I should think, is perhaps the course of conduct your mother means to indicate."

"It strikes me," said Harold, the eldest son, "a good deal depends on what he did say to Eliza. Eliza!"

This last was a shout, and the girl responded to it, so that there were now two figures at the door, Mrs. Rexford drying the dish, and Eliza standing quite quietly and at ease.

"Yes, my son," responded Captain Rexford, "it does depend a good deal on what he did say to Eliza. Now, Eliza" (this was the beginning of a judicial inquiry), "I understand from Mrs. Rexford that——"

"I've heard all that you have said," said Eliza. "I've been just here."

"Ah! Then without any preface" (he gave a wave of his hand, as if putting aside the preface), "I might just ask you, Eliza, what this young—Harkness, I believe his name is—what——"

"He's just too chatty, that's all that's the matter with him," said Eliza. "He took off his hat and talked, and he'd have been talking yet if I hadn't come away. There was no sense in what he said, good or bad."

The children were at last allowed to go on with their lessons.

When the dish-washing was finished and Mrs. Rexford came into the sitting-room, Sophia took the lamp by the light of which she had been doing the family darning into the kitchen, and she and Harold established themselves there. Harold, a quiet fellow about nineteen, was more like his half-sister than any other member of the family, and there was no need that either should explain to the other why they were glad to leave the nervous briskness of the more occupied room. It was their habit to spend their evenings here, and Sophia arranged that Eliza should bring her own sewing and work at it under her direction. Harold very often read aloud to them. It was astonishing how quickly, not imperceptibly, but determinedly, the Canadian girl took on the habits and manners of the lady beside her; not thereby producing a poor imitation, for Eliza was not imitative, but by careful study reproducing in herself much of Sophia's refinement.



CHAPTER XV.

That evening Blue and Red were sent to bed rather in disgrace, because they had professed themselves too sleepy to finish sewing a seam their mother had given them to do.

Very sleepy, very glad to fold up their work, they made their way, through the cold empty room which was intended to be the drawing-room when it was furnished, to one of the several bedrooms that opened off it. There was only one object in the empty room which they passed through, and that was the big family carriage, for which no possible use could be found during the long winter, and for the storing of which no outside place was considered good enough. It stood wheelless in a corner, with a large grey cloth over it, and the girls passing it with their one flickering candle looked at it a little askance. They had the feeling that something might be within or behind it which would bounce out at them.

Once, however, within their small whitewashed bedroom, they felt quite safe. Their spirits rose a little when they shut the door, for now there was no exacting third person to expect anything but what they chose to give. Theirs was that complete happiness of two persons when it has been long proved that neither ever does anything which the other does not like, and neither ever wants from the other what is not naturally given.

They were still sleepy when they unbuttoned each other's frocks, but when they had come to the next stage of shaking out their curly hair they began to make remarks which tended to dispel their drowsiness.

Said Blue, "Is it very dreadful to be a dentist?"

Said Red, "Yes; horrid. You have to put your fingers in people's mouths, you know."

"But doctors have to cut off legs, and doctors are quite——"

There is another advantage in perfect union of twin souls, and that is, that it is never necessary to finish a remark the end of which does not immediately find expression on the tip of the tongue, for the other always knows what is going to be said.

"Yes, I know doctors are," replied Red; "still, you know, Principal Trenholme said Mr. Harkness is not a well-bred American."

"His first name is Cyril. I saw it on the card," replied Blue, quitting the question of social position.

"It's a lovely name," said Red, earnestly.

"And I'll tell you," said Blue, turning round with sudden earnestness and emphasis, "I think he's the handsomest young man I ever saw."

The rather odd plan Mrs. Rexford had hit on for lessening the likeness between these two, clothing each habitually in a distinctive colour, had not been carried into her choice of material for their dressing-gowns. These garments were white; and, as a stern mood of utility had guided their mother's shears, they were short and almost shapeless. The curly hair which was being brushed over them had stopped its growth, as curly hair often does, at the shoulders. In the small whitewashed room the two girls looked as much like choristers in surplices as anything might look, and their sweet oval faces had that perfect freshness of youth which is strangely akin to the look of holiness, in spite of the absolute frivolity of conduct which so often characterises young companionship.

When Blue made her earnest little assertion, she also made an earnest little dab at the air with her brush to emphasise it; and Red, letting her brush linger on her curly mop, replied with equal emphasis and the same earnest, open eyes, "Oh, so do I."

This decided, there was quiet for a minute, only the soft sound of brushing. Then Red began that pretty little twittering which bore to their laughter when in full force the same relation that the first faint chit, chit, chit of a bird bears to its full song.

"Weren't papa and mamma funny when they talked about what we should do if he spoke to us?"

She did not finish her sentence before merriment made it difficult for her to pronounce the words; and as for Blue, she was obliged to throw herself on the side of the bed.

Then again Blue sat up.

"You're to look down as you pass him, Red—like this, look!"

"That isn't right." Red said this with a little shriek of delight. "You're smiling all over your face—that won't do."

"Because I can't keep my face straight. Oh, Red, what shall we do? I know that if we ever see him after this we shall simply die."

"Oh, yes"—with tone of full conviction—"I know we shall."

"But we shall meet him."

They became almost serious for some moments at the thought of the inevitableness of the meeting and the hopelessness of conducting themselves with any propriety.

"And what will he think?" continued Blue, in sympathetic distress; "he will certainly think we are laughing at him, for he will never imagine how much we have been amused."

Red, however, began to brush her hair again. "Blue," said she, "did you ever try to see how you looked in the glass when your eyes were cast down? You can't, you know."

Blue immediately tried, and admitted the difficulty.

"I wish I could," said Red, "for then I should know how I should look when he had spoken to me and I was passing him."

"Well, do it, and I'll tell you."

"Then you stand there, and I'll come along past and look down just when I meet you."

Red made the experiment rather seriously, but Blue cried out:

"Oh, you looked at me out of the corner of your eye, just as you were looking down—that'll never do."

"I didn't mean to. Now look! I'm doing it again." The one white-gowned figure stood with its back to the bed while the other through its little acting down the middle of the room.

"That's better"—critically.

"Well," pursued Red, with interest, "how does it look?"

"Rather nice. I shouldn't wonder if he fell in love with you."

This was a sudden and extraordinary audacity of thought.

"Oh, Blue!"—in shocked tones—"How could you think of such a thing!" She reproached her sister as herself. It was actually the first time such a theme had been broached even in their private converse.

"Well," said Blue, stoutly, "he might, you know. Such things happen."

"I don't think it's quite nice to think of it," said Red, meditatively.

"It isn't nice," said Blue, agreeing perfectly, but unwilling to recant; "still, it may be our duty to think of it. Sophia said once that a woman was always more or less responsible if a man fell in love with her."

"Did Sophia say that?" Weighty worlds of responsibility seemed to be settling on little Red's shoulders.

"Yes; she was talking to mamma about something. So, as it's quite possible he might fall in love with us, we ought to consider the matter."

"You don't think he's falling in love with Eliza, do you?"

"Oh no!"—promptly—"but then Eliza isn't like us."

Red looked at her pretty face in the glass as she continued to smooth out the brown curls. She thought of Eliza's tall figure, immobile white face, and crown of red hair.

"No," she said, meditatively; "but, Blue"—this quite seriously—"I hope he won't fall in love with us."

"Oh, so do I; for it would make him feel so miserable. But I think, Red, when you looked down you did not look prim enough—you know papa said 'prim.' Now, you stand, and I'll do it."

So Blue now passed down the little narrow room, but when she came to the critical spot, the supposed meeting ground, her desire to laugh conflicting with the effort to pull a long face, caused such a wry contortion of her plump visage that seriousness deserted them once more, and they bubbled over in mirth that would have been boisterous had it not been prudently muffled in the pillows.

After that they said their prayers. But when they had taken off the clumsy dressing-gowns and got into the feather-bed under the big patchwork quilt, like two little white rabbits nestling into one another, they reverted once more to their father's instructions for meeting the dentist, and giggled themselves to sleep.

Another pair of talkers, also with some common attributes of character, but with less knowledge of each other, were astir after these sisters had fallen asleep.

Most of the rooms in the house were on the ground-floor, but there were two attic bedrooms opening off a very large room in the roof which the former occupant had used as a granary. One of these Sophia occupied with a child; the other had been given to Eliza. That night, when Sophia was composing herself to sleep, she heard Eliza weeping. So smothered were the sounds of sorrow that she could hardly hear them. She lifted her head, listened, then, putting a long fur cloak about her, went into the next room.

No sooner was her hand on the latch of Eliza's door than all sound ceased. She stood for a minute in the large, dark granary. The draught in it was almost great enough to be called a breeze, and it whispered in the eaves which the sloping rafters made round the edges of the floor as a wind might sigh in some rocky cave. Sophia opened the door and went in.

"What is the matter, Eliza?"

Even in the almost darkness she could see that the girl's movement Was an involuntary feigning of surprise.

"Nothing."

"I used to hear you crying when we first came, Eliza, and now you have begun it again. Tell me what troubles you. Why do you pretend that nothing is the matter?"

The cold glimmer of the light of night reflected on snow came in at the diamond-shaped window, and the little white bed was just shadowed forth to Sophia's sight. The girl in it might have been asleep, she remained so quiet.

"Are you thinking about your father?"

"I don't know."

"Do you dislike being here?"

"No; but—"

"But what? What is troubling you, Eliza? You're not a girl to cry for nothing. Since you came to us I have seen that you are a straightforward, good girl; and you have plenty of sense, too. Come, tell me how it is you cry like this?"

Eliza sat up. "You won't tell them downstairs?" she said slowly.

"You may trust me not to repeat anything that is not necessary."

Eliza moved nervously, and her movements suggested hopelessness of trouble and difficulty of speech. Sophia pitied her.

"I don't know," she said restlessly, stretching out aimless hands into the darkness, "I don't know why I cry, Miss Sophia. It isn't for one thing more than another; everything is the reason—everything, everything."

"You mean, for one thing, that your father has gone, and you are homesick?"

"You said you wouldn't tell?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm not sorry about that, because—well, I suppose I liked father as well as he liked me, but as long as he lived I'd have had to stay on the clearin', and I hated that. I'm glad to be here; but, oh! I want so much—I want so much—oh, Miss Sophia, don't you know?"

In some mysterious way Sophia felt that she did know, although she could not in any way formulate her confused feeling of kinship with this young girl, so far removed from her in outward experience. It seemed to her that she had at some time known such trouble as this, which was composed of wanting "so much—so much," and hands that were stretched, not towards any living thing, but vaguely to all possible possession outside the longing self.

"I want to be something," said Eliza, "rich or—I don't know—I would like to drive about in a fine way like some ladies do, or wear grander clothes than any one. Yes, I would like to keep a shop, or do something to make me very rich, and make everybody wish they were like me."

Sophia smiled to herself, but the darkness was about them. Then Sophia sighed. Crude as were the notions that went to make up the ignorant idea of what was desirable, the desire for it was without measure. There was a silence, and when Eliza spoke again Sophia did not doubt but that she told her whole mind.

It is a curious thing, this, that when a human being of average experience is confided in, the natural impulse is to assume that confidence is complete, and the adviser feels as competent to pronounce upon the case from the statement given as if minds were as limpid as crystal, and words as fit to represent them as a mirror is to show the objects it reflects. Yet if the listener would but look within, he would know that in any complicated question of life there would be much that he would not, more than he could not, tell of himself, unless long years of closest companionship had revealed the one heart to the other in ways that are beyond the power of words. And that is so even if the whole heart is set to be honest above all—and how many hearts are so set?

"You see," said Eliza, "if people knew I had lived on a very poor clearin' and done the work, they'd despise me perhaps."

"It is no disgrace to any one to have worked hard, and it certainly cannot be a disadvantage in this country."

"It was rough."

"You are not very rough, Eliza. It strikes me that you have been pretty carefully trained and taught."

"Yes, I was that"—with satisfaction. "But don't you think, if I got on, grand people would always look down at me if they knew I'd lived so common? And besides, I'm sometimes afraid the man that went shares at the land with father will want to find me."

"But you said you told him you were coming away."

"I told him, plain and honest; but I had a long way to walk till I got to the train, and I just went off. But he won't find it so easy to fill my place, and get some one to do the housework! He'd have kept me, if he could; and if he heard where I was he might come and try to get me back by saying father said I was to obey him till I was twenty-one."

"If your father said—that—"

"No," cried the girl, vehemently, "he never did."

"You will hear from your uncle in Scotland?" said Sophia.

"I don't believe he'll write to me. I don't believe he lives any more where I sent the letter. It's years and years since father heard from him. I said I'd write because I thought it would look more respectable to Mrs. Rexford to have an uncle. And I did write; but he won't answer."

This was certainly frank.

"Was that honest, Eliza?"

"No, Miss Sophia; but I felt so miserable. It's hard to walk off with your bundle, and be all alone and afraid of a man coming after you, and being so angry. He was dreadful angry when I told him I'd come. If you'd only promise not tell where I came from to anybody, so that it can't get round to him that I'm here, and so that people won't know how I lived before—"

"Well, we certainly have no reason to tell anybody. If it will make you content, I can assure you none of us will talk about your affairs. Was that all the trouble?"

"No—not all."

"Well, what else?" Sophia laughed a little, and laid her cool hand on the girl's hot one.

"I can't be anything grand ever, and begin by being a servant, Miss Sophia. I say I'm not a servant, and I try not to act like one; but Mrs. Rexford, she's tried hard to make me one. You wouldn't like to be a servant, Miss Sophia?"

"You are very childish and foolish," said Sophia. "If I had not been just as foolish about other things when I was your age I would laugh at you now. But I know it's no use to tell you that the things you want will not make you happy, and that the things you don't want would, because I know you will not believe it. I will do my best to help you to get what you want, so far as it is not wrong, if you will promise to tell me all your difficulties."

"Will you help me? Why are you so kind?"

"Because—" said Sophia. Then she said no more.

Eliza showed herself cheered.

"You're the only one I care to talk to, Miss Sophia. The others haven't as much sense as you, have they?"

As these words were quietly put forth in the darkness, without a notion of impropriety, Sophia was struck with the fact that they coincided with her own estimate of the state of the case.

"Eliza, what are you talking of—not of my father and mother surely?"

"Why, yes. I think they're good and kind, but I don't think they've a deal of sense—do you?"

"My father is a wiser man than you can understand, Eliza; and—" Sophia broke off, she was fain to retreat; it was cold for one thing.

"Miss Sophia," said Eliza, as she was getting to the door, "there's one thing—you know that young man they were talking about to-night?"

"What of him?"

"Well, if he were to ask about me, you'd not tell him anything, would you? I've never told anybody but you about father, or any particulars. The others don't know anything, and you won't tell, will you?"

"I've told you I won't take upon myself to speak of your affairs. What has that young man to do with it?"—with some severity.

"It's only that he's a traveller, and I feel so silly about every traveller, for fear they'd want me to go back to the clearin'."

Sophia took the few necessary steps in the cold dark granary and reached her own room.



CHAPTER XVI.

Sophia was sitting with Mrs. Rexford on the sofa that stood with its back to the dining-room window. The frame of the sofa was not turned, but fashioned with saw and knife and plane; not glued, but nailed together. Yet it did not lack for comfort; it was built oblong, large, and low; it was cushioned with sacking filled with loose hay plentifully mixed with Indian grass that gave forth a sweet perfume, and the whole was covered with a large neat pinafore of such light washing stuff as women wear about their work on summer days. Sophia and her step-mother were darning stockings. The homesickness of the household was rapidly subsiding, and to-day these two were not uncomfortable or unhappy. The rest of the family, some to work, some to play, and some to run errands, had been dismissed into the large outside.

The big house was tranquil. The afternoon sun, which had got round to the kitchen window, blazed in there through a fringe of icicles that hung from the low eaves of the kitchen roof, and sent a long strip of bright prismatic rays across the floor and through the door on to the rag carpet under the dining-room table. Ever and anon, as the ladies sewed, the sound of sleigh-bells came to them, distant, then nearer, then near, with the trotting of horses' feet as they passed the house, then again more distant. The dining-room window faced the road, but one could not see through it without standing upright.

"Mamma," said Sophia, "it is quite clear we can never make an ordinary servant out of Eliza; but if we try to be companionable to her we may help her to learn what she needs to learn, and make her more willing to stay with us."

It was Mrs. Rexford's way never to approach a subject gradually in speech. If her mind went through the process ordinarily manifested in introductory remarks it slipped through it swiftly and silently, and her speech darted into the heart of the subject, or skipped about and hit it on all sides at once.

"Ah, but I told her again and again, Sophia, to say 'miss' to the girls. She either didn't hear, or she forgot, or she wouldn't understand. I think you're the only one she'll say 'miss' to. But we couldn't do without her. Mrs. Nash was telling me the other day that her girl had left in the middle of the washing, and the one they had before that for a year—a little French Romanist—stole all their handkerchiefs, and did not give them back till she made confession to her priest at Easter. It was very awkward, Sophia, to be without handkerchiefs all winter." The crescendo emphasis which Mrs. Rexford had put into her remarks found its fortissimo here. Then she added more mildly, "Though I got no character with Eliza I am convinced she will never pilfer."

Mrs. Rexford was putting her needle out and in with almost electric speed. Her mind was never quiet, but there was a healthy cheerfulness in her little quick movements that removed them from the region of weak nervousness. Yet Sophia knit her brow, and it was with an effort that she continued amicably:

"Certainly we should be more uncomfortable without her just now than she would be without us; but if she left us there's no saying where her ambition might lead her."

Mrs. Rexford bethought her that she must look at some apples that were baking in the kitchen oven, which she did, and was back in time to make a remark in exchange without causing any noticeable break in the conversation. She always gave remarks in exchange, seldom in reply.

"Scotchmen are faithful to their kinsfolk usually, aren't they, Sophia?"

"You think that the uncle she wrote to will answer. He may be dead, or may have moved away; the chances are ten to one that he will not get the letter. I think the girl is in our hands. We have come into a responsibility that we can't make light of."

"Good gracious, Sophia! it's only the hen with one chicken that's afraid to take another under her wing."

"I know you want to do your best for her—that's why I'm talking."

"Oh, I—it's you that takes half the burden of them all."

"Well, we want to do our best—"

"And you, my dear, could go back whenever you liked. You have not burned the bridges and boats behind you. There's one would be glad to see you back in the old country, and that lover of yours is a good man, Sophia."

A sudden flush swept over the young woman's face, as if the allusion offended her; but she took no other notice of what was said, and continued: "I don't suggest any radical alteration in our ways; I only thought that, if you had it in your mind to make a companion of her, the pains you take in teaching her might take a rather different form, and perhaps have a better result."

"I think our own girls grow more giddy every day," said Mrs. Rexford, exactly as if it were an answer. "If Blue and Red were separated they would both be more sensible."

The mother's mind had now wandered from thought of the alien she had taken, not because she had not given attention to the words of the daughter she thought so wise, but because, having considered them as long as she was accustomed to consider anything, she had decided to act upon them, and so could dismiss the subject with a good conscience.

The conversation ceased thus, as many conversations do, without apparent conclusion; for Sophia, vexed by her step-mother's flighty manner of speech, hid her mood in silence. Anything like discussion between these two always irritated Sophia, and then, conscious that she had in this fallen below her ideal, she chafed again at her own irritation. The evil from which she now suffered was of the stuff of which much of the pain of life is made—a flimsy stuff that vanishes before the investigation of reason more surely than the stuff of our evanescent joys. There was nothing that could be called incompatibility of temper between these two; no one saw more clearly than Sophia the generosity and courage of Mrs. Rexford's heart; no one else sympathised so deeply with her motherly cares, for no one else understood them half so well; and yet it might have been easier for Sophia Rexford to have lived in external peace with a covetous woman, able to appreciate and keep in steady view the relative importance of her ideas.

Meantime Mrs. Rexford went on talking. She was generally unconscious of the other's intellectual disdain. Pretty soon they heard bells and horses' feet that slackened at the gate. Sophia stood up to look.

There was a comfortable sleigh, albeit somewhat battered and dingy, turning in at the gate. A good-looking girl was driving it; a thin, pale lady sat at her side. Both were much enveloped in faded furs. Over the seats of the sleigh and over their knees were spread abundant robes of buffalo hide. The horse that drew the vehicle was an old farm-horse, and the hand that guided the reins appeared more skilful at driving than was necessary. The old reins and whip were held in a most stylish manner, and the fair driver made an innocent pretence of guiding her steed up the road to the back-yard with care. The animal the while, having once been shown the gate, trotted quietly, with head down, up the middle of the sleigh track, and stopped humbly where the track stopped, precisely as it would have done had there been no hand upon the rein.

Sophia, standing in the middle of the sitting-room, watched the visitors through the windows of that room and of the kitchen, with unwonted animation in her handsome face. The girl, who was now evidently coming with her mother to call upon them, had been named to her more than once by discriminating people as the most likely person in the neighbourhood to prove a friend and companion to herself, and Sophia, in her present situation, could not be at all indifferent to such a prospect. She had already observed them in church, wondering not a little at that scrupulous attention to ceremony which had made them ignore the existence of the newcomers till their acquaintance should have been made in due form.

"Mamma," said she, "this is Mrs. Bennett and her daughter."

"Something to do with an admiral, haven't they?" cried Mrs. Rexford.

It proved to be an unnecessary exertion of memory on Mrs. Rexford's part to recollect what she had heard of the relatives of her visitors, for not long after Mrs. Bennett had introduced herself and her daughter she brought her uncle, the admiral, into the conversation with considerable skill.

She was a delicate, narrow-minded woman, with no open vulgarity about her, but simply ignorant of the fact that bragging of one's distinguished relatives had fallen into disuse. Her daughter, was like her in manner, with the likeness imposed by having such a mother, but much more largely made in mind and body, pleasant-looking, healthy, high-browed. Sophia liked her appearance.

Mrs. Rexford, her mind ever upon some practical exigency, now remembered that she had also heard that the Bennetts managed their dairy excellently, and, having a large craving for help on all such subjects, she began to bewail her own ignorance, asking many and various questions; but, although she did not perceive it, it soon became apparent to her more observant daughter that the visitors, having come out to make a call of ceremony, preferred to talk on subjects more remote from their daily drudgery, on subjects which they apparently considered more elegant and becoming. Unable to check the flow of her mother's talk, Sophia could only draw her chair cosily near to Miss Bennett and strike into a separate conversation, hoping for, and expecting, mental refreshment.

"I suppose there are no good lending libraries in any of the towns near here," she began. "How do you get new books or magazines?"

Miss Bennett had a bright, cordial manner. She explained that she thought there was a circulating library in every town. When she was visiting in Quebec her friends had got a novel for her at two cents a day. And then she said Principal Trenholme bought a good many books, and he had once told her mother that he would lend them any they chose, but they had never had time to go and look over them. "It has," she added, "been such an advantage to Chellaston to have a gentleman so clever as he at the college."

"Has it?" said Sophia, willing to hear more. "Is he very clever?"

"Oh," cried the other, "from Oxford, you know;" and she said it in much the tone she might have said "from heaven."

"Is it long," asked Sophia, "since you have been in England?"

Miss Bennett said she had never been "home," but she longed, above all things, to go.

She had, it seemed, been born in Canada, and her parents had no possessions in the mother-country, and yet she always called it "home." This was evidently a tradition.

Sophia, who had come from England a little tired of the conditions there, and eager for a change, felt the pathetic sameness of the discontent wrought by surfeit and by famine.

"Yet," said she, "it is a relief to the mind to feel that one lives in a country where no worthy person is starving, and where every one has a good chance in life if he will but avail himself of it. It seems to make me breathe more freely to know that in all this great country there is none of that necessary poverty that we have in big English towns."

Little answer was made to this, and Sophia went on to talk of what interested her in English politics; but found that of the politics, as well as of the social condition, of the country she adored, Miss Bennett was largely ignorant. Her interest in such matters appeared to sum itself up in a serene belief that Disraeli, then prominent, was the one prop of the English Constitution, and as adequate to his position as Atlas beneath the world. Now, Sophia cherished many a Radical opinion of her own, and she would have enjoyed discussion; but it would have been as difficult to aim a remark at the present front of her new acquaintance as it would be for a marksman to show his skill with a cloud of vapour as a target. Sophia tried Canadian politics, owning her ignorance and expressing her desire to understand what she had read in the newspapers since her arrival; but Miss Bennett was not sure that there was anything that "could exactly be called politics" in Canada, except that there was a Liberal party who "wanted to ruin the country by free trade."

Sophia ceased to take the initiative. She still endeavoured to respect the understanding of a girl of whom she had heard that when her father's fortunes were at a low ebb she had retrieved them by good management and personal industry—a girl, too, who through years of toil had preserved sprightliness and perfect gentility. What though this gentility was somewhat cramped by that undue importance given to trifles which is often the result of a remote life; it was still a very lovely thing, a jewel shining all the more purely for its iron setting of honest labour. Sophia fought with the scorn that was thrusting itself into her heart as she listened when Miss Bennett now talked in a charming way about the public characters and incidents which interested her.

"I wish for your sake, Miss Rexford," she said, "that some of the Royal family would come out again. The only time that there is any real advantage in being in a colony is when some of them come out; for here, you know, they take notice of every one."

"One would still be on the general level then," said Sophia, smiling.

"Well, I don't know. It makes one feel distinguished, you know, in spite of that. Now, when the Prince was out, he stopped here for a night, and we had a ball. It was simply delightful! He danced with us all—I mean with all who could claim to be ladies, and indeed with some who could not; but how could he discriminate? There was a man called Blake, who kept a butcher's shop here then—you may have noticed we haven't such a thing as a butcher's shop in the village now, Miss Rexford?"

"Indeed I have. It seems so odd."

"Blake had a handsome daughter; and when we had a ball for the Prince, didn't he buy her a fine dress, and take her to it! She really looked very handsome."

"I hope the Prince danced with her," laughed Sophia. Her good spirits were rising, in spite of herself, under the influence of the liveliness with which Miss Bennett's mind had darted, birdlike, into its own element.

"Yes, he did. Wasn't it good-natured of him! I believe his aide-de-camp told him who she was; but he was so gracious; he said she should not go away mortified. I never spoke to her myself; but I've no doubt she was unable to open her mouth without betraying her origin; but perhaps on that occasion she had the grace to keep silent, and she danced fairly well."

"Was her head turned by the honour?" asked Sophia, led by the other's tone to expect a sequel to the tale.

"Poor girl! The end was sadder than that. She caught a violent cold, from wearing a dress cut low when she wasn't accustomed to it, and she died in a week. When we heard of it I was glad that he had danced with her; but some were cruel enough to say that it served Blake right for his presumption. He was so broken-hearted he left the place. The dress she wore that night was a green silk, and he had her buried in it; and some one told the Prince, and he sent some flowers. Wasn't it sweet of him! They were buried with her too. It was quite romantic."

"More romantic to have such a swan-like death than to live on as a butcher's daughter," said Sophia, and sarcasm was only a small ingredient in the speech.

"We were quite grieved about it," said Miss Bennett, sincerely.

Sophia also felt sorry, but it was not her way to say so. She was more interested in remarking upon the singular method of getting butcher's meat then in vogue at Chellaston. A Frenchman, a butcher in a small way, drove from door to door with his stock, cutting and weighing his joints in an open box-sleigh. To see the frozen meat thus manipulated in the midst of the snow had struck Sophia as one of the most novel features of their present way of life. Miss Bennett, however, could hardly be expected to feel its picturesqueness. Her parents did not fancy this vendor's meat, and at present they usually killed their own. Her father, she said, had grown quite dexterous in the art.

"Really!" cried Sophia. This was an item of real interest, for it suggested to her for the first time the idea that a gentleman could slaughter an ox. She was not shocked; it was simply a new idea, which she would have liked to enlarge on; but good-breeding forbade, for Miss Bennett preferred to chat about the visit of the Prince, and she continued to do so in a manner so lively that Sophia found it no dull hearing.

"And, do you know," she cried, "what Bertha Nash did? The Nashes, you know, are of quite a common family, although, as Dr. Nash is everybody's doctor, of course we are all on good terms with them. Well, Bertha asked the Prince how his mother was!" She stopped.

"I suppose he knew whom she was talking about?"

"Oh, that was the worst of it—he couldn't help knowing," cried Miss Bennett. "I should have sunk through the floor with mortification if I had done such a thing. I should have expected to be arrested on the spot for high treason. Bertha says, you know, that she was so nervous at the thought of who her partner was that she didn't know what she was saying; but I scarcely think she knew really how to address him. One can never be thankful enough, I'm sure, for having been thoroughly well brought up."

She went on to explain what had been her own sensations when first accosted by this wonderful Prince, upon being led out by him, and so on. It all sounded like a new fairy tale; but afterwards, when she had gone, with cordial wishes, as she took leave, that another prince might come soon and dance with Sophia, the latter felt as if she had been reading a page of an old-fashioned history which took account only of kings and tournaments.

This visit was a distinct disappointment on the whole. Sophia had hoped more from it, and coming after weeks that had been trying, it had power to depress. It was late afternoon now, and the day was the last in the year. Sophia, going upstairs to get rid of the noise of the children, was arrested by the glow of the sunset, and, weary as she was, stood long by the diamond window that was set in the wooden wall of her room. It was cold. She wrapped a cloak about her. She did not at first look observantly at the glow and beauty outside. Her eyes wandered over the scene, the bright colour upon it rousing just enough interest to keep her standing there: her thoughts were within.

Sophia Rexford had set herself, like many a saint of olden and modern times, to crush within her all selfishness; and the result had been the result of all such effort when it is staunch and honest—to show that that against which she was warring was no mere mood or bad habit, to be overcome by directing the life on a nobler plan, but a living thing, with a vitality so strong that it seemed as if God Himself must have given it life. She stood now baffled, as she had often been before, by her invincible enemy. Where was the selfless temper of mind that was her ideal? Certainly not within her. She was too candid to suppose for a moment that the impatient scorn she felt for those with whom she had been talking approached in any way to that humility and love that are required of the Christian. She felt overwhelmed by surging waves of evil within. It was at the source the fountain ought to be sweet, and there ambition and desire for pleasure rose still triumphant; and the current of her will, set against them, seemed only to produce, not their abatement, but a whirlpool of discontent, which sucked into itself all natural pleasures, and cast out around its edge those dislikes and disdains which were becoming habitual in her intercourse with others. It was all wrong—she knew it. She leaned her head against the cold pane, and her eyes grew wet with tears.

There is no sorrow on earth so real as this; no other for which such bitter tears have been shed; no other which has so moved the heart of God with sympathy. Yet there came to Sophia just then a strange thought that her tears were unnecessary, that the salvation of the world was something better than this conflict, that the angels were looking upon her discouragement in pained surprise.

She had no understanding with which to take in this thought. As she looked at it, with her soul's eye dim, it passed away; and she, trying in vain to recall the light that it seemed to hold, wondered if it would come again.

Perhaps the tears had given relief to her brain; perhaps some Divine Presence had come near her, giving hope that she could not weigh or measure or call by name; at any rate, as she looked round again with fresh glance, the scene outside seemed fairer than it had yet appeared to her.

A long strip had been swept on the ice of the river by pleasure-loving hands. Down this burnished path young men and maidens were skating, and their way was paved with gold. There was soft tinting of this same light on the undulations of the pearly land beyond; blue shadows were in its woods, and reflected fire on many a window of the houses that clustered near and far. She knew that in each house that was a true Canadian home there was joyous preparations going on for the next day's fete. She wondered what it would be like to be at home in this country, to be one in its sports and festivities. She could not see from her attic window the land on this side of the river, but she heard the shouts of some boys who were spending their holiday at the college. They were at some game or other in a field near. Sophia liked to hear them.

Just then Mrs. Rexford came upstairs to consult her about something. She joined in the outlook for a few moments, and the sunset made her reflective.

"Well, my love," said she, "last year at this time we did not know we should be here to-day! Ah, Sophia, it is always a little doleful to see the Old Year go out; but here, where there are no bells in the churches, it will seem less solemn."

END OF BOOK I.



BOOK II.

"Necessity, like light's electric force, Is in ourselves and all things, and no more Without us than within us—."



CHAPTER I.

The bells have solemn sound that from old belfries ring the passing of the year in the hearing of thousands; but perhaps it is a more solemn thing to watch and tell the birth of a new year by the march of stars that look down out of their purple void upon a land of trackless snow. If ceremony and the united sentiment of many hearts have impressive effect, they yet tend to lighten the burden of individual responsibility, which presses with weight, like the weight of the atmosphere upon a vacuum, when a man tries to grapple with his own soul in solitude.

Alec Trenholme was spending another wakeful night in the living-room of his small railway station. Winter lay around him. For a month the blueberry flats and bramble thickets had been wholly lost under the snow, which stretched far whiter than the pure white of the birch trees in the nearest groves. Now the last night but one of the old year had brought a fresh downfall, unusually heavy; the long, straight railway track, and the sleigh-road which was kept open between the station and Turrifs Settlement, had been obliterated by it. Alec Trenholme had awoke that morning to observe that his little station of new wood, and the endless line of rough telegraph poles, were the only remaining signs of man's lordship of earth, as far as his eyes could see. It was upon this sight, when the snow clouds had fled, that he had seen a scarlet sun come up; over the same scene he had watched it roll its golden chariot all day, and, tinging the same unbroken drifts, it had sunk scarlet again in the far southwest. He had not been far from his house, and no one, in train, or sleigh, or on snow-shoes, had happened to come near it.

He would have gone himself to Turrifs for milk, for the pleasure of exchanging a word with his fellow-men, and for air and exercise, had it not been that he had hourly expected to see an engine, with its snow-plough, approaching on the rails. Conversation by telegraph would have been a relief to him, but the wires seemed to have succumbed in more than one place to their weight of snow, and there was nothing for this young station-master to do but wait, and believe that communication would be re-established over the road and the wires sooner or later. In the meantime he suffered no personal inconvenience, unless loneliness can be thus named, for he had abundance of food and fuel. He watched the bright day wane and the sun of the old year set, and filled his stove with wood, and ate his supper, and told himself that he was a very fortunate fellow and much better off than a large proportion of men.

It is not always when we tell ourselves that we are well off that we are happiest: that self-addressed assertion often implies some tacit contradiction.

When darkness came he wondered if he should put on his snow-shoes and run over to Turrifs. Yet for some reason he did not go, in the way that men so often do not do things that they think on the whole would be very good things to do. An hour or two later he knew that the good people there would have gone to bed and that he had no longer the option of going. He did not go to bed himself. He had not had enough exercise that day to make him sleepy; and then, too, he thought he would sit up and see the old year out. He had an indistinct idea that it was rather a virtuous thing to do, rather more pious than sleeping the night through just as if it were any other night. He put his much-handled, oft-read books down before him on the table, and set himself to passing the evening with them. Midnight is actually midnight when the sun goes down before five o'clock and there is no artificial interest for the after hours.

Most men have more religion at heart, latent or developed, than can be seen by others. When they have not, when what shows is as much as what is—God pity them!

Alec Trenholme was not given to self-dissection or to expression of his private sentiments, therefore neither to himself nor to others was the religion of him very visible. Nevertheless, this evening his books, which had become not less but more to him because he had read them often, palled upon his taste. When he was a boy his father had taught him that at New Year's time one ought to consider whether the past had been spent well, and how the future could be spent better. So, as time went on, he pushed his books further and set himself to this consideration. For a while he sat looking at his own doings only by the light, as it were, of two candles—the one, of expediency; the other, of rectitude. Had he been wise? Had he been good?

Not being of a contemplative or egotistical disposition, he soon fidgeted. Thinking he heard a sound outside, which might be wind rising, or might be the distant approach of the iron snow-plough, he got up to look out. The small panes of his window were so obscured by frostwork that he did not attempt to look through the glass, but opened his door. Far or near there was no sign of rising wind or coming engine; only, above, the glowing stars, with now and then a shaft of northern light passing majestically beneath them, and, below, the great white world, dim, but clearly seen as it reflected the light. The constellations attracted his attention. There hung Orion, there the Pleiades, there those mists of starlight which tell us of space and time of which we cannot conceive. Standing, looking upwards, he suddenly believed himself to be in the neighbourhood of God.

When the keen air upon his bare head had driven him indoors, he sat down again to formulate his good resolutions, he found that his candles of expediency and morality had gone out. The light which was there instead was the Presence of God; but so diffused was this light, so dim, that it was as hard for him now to see distinction between right and wrong as it would have been outside upon the snow to see a shadow cast by rays which had left their stars half a century before. All, all of which he could think seemed wrong, because it was not God; all, all of which he could think seemed right, because it was part of God. The young man's face sank on his arms and lay buried there, while he thought, and thought, and thought, trying to bring a life of which he could think into relation with that which is unthinkable.