Of late Biah’s good offices had been in special requisition, as the deacon had been for nearly a month on a sick bed with one of those interminable attacks of typhus fever which used to prevail in old times, when the doctor did everything he could to make it certain that a man once brought down with sickness never should rise again.

But Silas Pitkin had a constitution derived through an indefinite distance from a temperate, hard-working, godly ancestry, and so withstood both death and the doctor, and was alive and in a convalescent state, which gave hope of his being able to carve the turkey at his Thanksgiving dinner.

The evening sunlight was just fading out of the little “keeping-room,” adjoining the bed-room, where the convalescent now was able to sit up most of the day.  A cot bed had been placed there, designed for him to lie down upon in intervals of fatigue.  At present, however, he was sitting in his arm-chair, complacently watching the blaze of the hickory fire, or following placidly the motions of his wife’s knitting-needles.

There was an air of calmness and repose on his thin, worn features that never was there in days of old:  the haggard, anxious lines had been smoothed away, and that spiritual expression which sickness and sorrow sometimes develops on the human face reigned in its place.  It was the “clear shining after rain.”

“Wife,” he said, “read me something I can’t quite remember out of the Bible.  It’s in the eighth of Deuteronomy, the second verse.”

Mrs. Pitkin opened the big family Bible on the stand, and read, “And thou shalt remember all the way in which the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee and to know what is in thy heart, and whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no.  And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”

“There, that’s it,” interrupted the deacon.  “That’s what I’ve been thinking of as I’ve lain here sick and helpless.  I’ve fought hard to keep things straight and clear the farm, but it’s pleased the Lord to bring me low.  I’ve had to lie still and leave all in his hands.”

“And where better could you leave all?” said his wife, with a radiant smile.

“Well, just so.  I’ve been saying, ’Here I am, Lord; do with me as seemeth to thee good,’ and I feel a great quiet now.  I think it’s doubtful if we make up the interest this year.  I don’t know what Bill may get for the hay:  but I don’t see much prospect of raisin’ on’t; and yet I don’t worry.  Even if it’s the Lord’s will to have the place sold up and we be turned out in our old age, I don’t seem to worry about it.  His will be done.”

There was a sound of rattling wheels at this moment, and anon there came a brush and flutter of garments, and Diana rushed in, all breezy with the freshness of out-door air, and caught Mrs. Pitkin in her arms and kissed her first and then the deacon with effusion.